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Thread: What is accessible text for representing a time of day?
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: Jeremy Echols
Date: Mon, Mar 27 2017 1:15PM
Subject: What is accessible text for representing a time of day?
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We have building hours listed on a page, and right now they say things like "9am-6pm". This sounds really confusing in NVDA - "9am" seems to be read as "9 ammeters" in some cases (but not all, oddly). I have tried various ways outputs, such as "9 a.m." and "9 AM", but I keep getting it read wrong.
I know one rule of working with screen readers was to avoid trying to force pronunciation, so I feel like there must be a better way to create times that make sense to everybody without spelling out "Nine o'clock in the morning until six o'clock in the evening". But for the life of me I can't find it. Help!
From: Jennifer Sutton
Date: Mon, Mar 27 2017 2:19PM
Subject: Re: What is accessible text for representing a time of day?
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In my view, both as a screen reader user and as someone who works with
developers, this is not a concern/an issue.
Please write your times as you normally would, and trust screen reader
users to handle their part of the "accessibility contract. It is our
responsibility to "mind" our screen reader and check, character by
character, if we are confused for some reason.
Thank you for your concern, as so many on this list always seem to be,
but screen reader users have bigger fish to fry than pronunciation
issues, even if that seems to be what sighted folks focus on.
In my experience, assuring functionality, rather than a high standard of
pronunciation (which can vary across screen readers and by user
settings) is *far* more important.
Jennifer
On 3/27/2017 12:15 PM, Jeremy Echols wrote:
> We have building hours listed on a page, and right now they say things like "9am-6pm". This sounds really confusing in NVDA - "9am" seems to be read as "9 ammeters" in some cases (but not all, oddly). I have tried various ways outputs, such as "9 a.m." and "9 AM", but I keep getting it read wrong.
>
> I know one rule of working with screen readers was to avoid trying to force pronunciation, so I feel like there must be a better way to create times that make sense to everybody without spelling out "Nine o'clock in the morning until six o'clock in the evening". But for the life of me I can't find it. Help!
> > > >
From: KP
Date: Mon, Mar 27 2017 3:02PM
Subject: Re: What is accessible text for representing a time of day?
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Of course you could use the 24 clock as railways and military have for years. I've never understood the confusion people have with nor the attachment to am And pm. (Said tongue firmly in cheek as I remain personally in favour of imperial over metric for most everyday transaction -YMMV)
Kevin
Sent from my iPhone
> On 28/03/2017, at 9:19 AM, Jennifer Sutton < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> In my view, both as a screen reader user and as someone who works with developers, this is not a concern/an issue.
>
> Please write your times as you normally would, and trust screen reader users to handle their part of the "accessibility contract. It is our responsibility to "mind" our screen reader and check, character by character, if we are confused for some reason.
>
>
> Thank you for your concern, as so many on this list always seem to be, but screen reader users have bigger fish to fry than pronunciation issues, even if that seems to be what sighted folks focus on.
>
>
> In my experience, assuring functionality, rather than a high standard of pronunciation (which can vary across screen readers and by user settings) is *far* more important.
>
>
> Jennifer
>
>
>
>> On 3/27/2017 12:15 PM, Jeremy Echols wrote:
>> We have building hours listed on a page, and right now they say things like "9am-6pm". This sounds really confusing in NVDA - "9am" seems to be read as "9 ammeters" in some cases (but not all, oddly). I have tried various ways outputs, such as "9 a.m." and "9 AM", but I keep getting it read wrong.
>>
>> I know one rule of working with screen readers was to avoid trying to force pronunciation, so I feel like there must be a better way to create times that make sense to everybody without spelling out "Nine o'clock in the morning until six o'clock in the evening". But for the life of me I can't find it. Help!
>> >> >> >> >
> > > >
From: Jeremy Echols
Date: Mon, Mar 27 2017 3:42PM
Subject: Re: What is accessible text for representing a time of day?
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Jennifer, thanks for the input. I was really only worried about figuring out pronunciation if I was missing some obvious, semantic way to do this. When I ask NVDA for the current time, for instance, it reads it just fine, so I figured I must be doing something wrong.
Kevin: I'd love to go with military time, personally. It's just so much more straightforward. Pretty sure I won't convince the world anytime soon, though :)
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Tue, Mar 28 2017 4:53AM
Subject: Re: What is accessible text for representing a time of day?
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One thing you could do is to write out the time range
9am to 6pm ratehr than 9am-6pm
I agree with Jennifer that you don't have to, it is up to the screen
reader vendor/users to code/understand commonly used phrases and words
correctly.
And, you are right, there is no semantic magic for doing this.
On 3/27/17, Jeremy Echols < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Jennifer, thanks for the input. I was really only worried about figuring
> out pronunciation if I was missing some obvious, semantic way to do this.
> When I ask NVDA for the current time, for instance, it reads it just fine,
> so I figured I must be doing something wrong.
>
> Kevin: I'd love to go with military time, personally. It's just so much
> more straightforward. Pretty sure I won't convince the world anytime soon,
> though :)
>
>