em and strong are not announced by screen readers (#tilPost)

Semantic HTML is the foundation of accessible websites. Correct and meaningful elements enable assistive technology to provide a site's information in a different form or shape. A screen reader, for example, takes a site and reads it out for the visitor. These cases show why semantic HTML matters!

And yet here we are after all these years of advocating for using strong (strong importance, seriousness, or urgency) and em (stress emphasis) instead of b (bold) and i (idiomatic text – italic), only to learn that screen readers don't announce strong or em.

And while I'm not a daily screen reader user, and VoiceOver isn't the only one out there, a quick test on my Mac confirmed it.

Martin Underhill shares more resources on his blog if you want to learn more.