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Re: Screen reader question

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Dec 12, 2007 4:20PM

On 12/12/07, XStandard Vlad Alexander < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Would anyone know how to force a pause in a middle of text? The solution
> we are looking for should not be specific to a given screen reader/version.

You usually should not attempt fixing the MANY reading issues that
screen readers have. Luckily, screen reader users are typically aware
of these and use various methods (such as reading character by
character or identifying punctuation) to make sense of information
that doesn't seem to be read correctly. Trying to hack them to work
the way we think they should is usually a bad idea and may result in
issues in other screen readers. My favorite was someone adding a text
image with alt of "You Ess Aye" to get the screen reader to pronounce
USA correctly.

It appears that it may be interpreting the text to be a list of items
(e.g., 1 - brush your teeth, 2 - comb your hair) and is forcing the
pause accordingly. You might try various space characters
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(punctuation)#Table_of_spaces) in
place to see what the screen reader does or restructure the
presentation altogether, but again, I don't think it's something you
should worry about.

Jared