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Re: Strikethrough Content with Screen Readers

for

From: Randall Pope
Date: Nov 24, 2010 10:09AM

Jared,

You do have a good point. You're right that I contradicted myself on my
last statement. The price I pay for not paying attention. Unfortunately
for me, I have a failure to communicate with coffee. Grinning.

In an ideal world, I’m in agreement that the industries need to "catch up"
with the latest web technologies being employed on the websites.

However that has not happens as most assistive technology industries for
people with disabilities are a bit behind, especially related to specialized
technology design or devices. The reason is obvious: not enough money (or
none at all) are going to researching and development these products.

More to the point, many of the "taking only" devices are inaccessible for
deaf-blind people who cannot hear and depends on braille to access the
information. I personally cannot hear the speech being spoken and depends
in readjusting the setting on the computer for me to view the web.

Again, I do support that the industries need to stay with the latest web
technology. I just wish they would broaden their product or devices to
accommodate people who are totally blind with severe hearing losses. Good
example: the growing population of Senior Citizens losing their hearing and
sight.

BTW, on behalf of AADB, I have filed our comments in response to the FFC's
call for comments on the distribution of the Deaf-Blind Technology
equipment. It does contain some issues related in accessing the web. It's
filed under 10-210 if anyone is interested in viewing the comments.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Randall Pope
AADB



-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jared Smith
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2010 11:56 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Strikethrough Content with Screen Readers

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Randall Pope wrote:

> Using different tones to read the different prices, is no help for the
> people who cannot hear, mainly the deaf-blind people who depends solely on
> braille display to read the web pages.

A relatively easy and universally accessible system would be to simply
allow the user to specify whether they want content that has been
stricken to be read in a different pitch or intonation, or to have it
identified explicitly by reading (or outputting to braille) "begin
deletion" before and "end deletion" after (or "insertion" in the case
of <ins>).

> Simple html markup is the best way to go to make it accessible.

I agree.

> As for the
> strike out, i think it would be best to use good proper language writing
to
> address the strike out issue.

But this contradicts your previous statement. The best way to make it
accessible is to allow the author to write it however they feel is
best using proper markup, and have AT support this standard mark-up.
Gone are the days when we can and should ask authors to stop using
standard and well-accepted markup and techniques because some AT has
yet to support markup that's been in existence for 12 years. I find it
interesting that we wring our hands about assistive technology and
ARIA and HTML5 support when most screen readers don't handle semantic
markup as simple as <strong> yet.

Jared