WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: how to write Roman numerals please

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jan 4, 2012 4:03PM

Roman numerals are no more or less confusing to screen reader users
than they are for other users. There's no necessity to code them so
they are read as numbers in screen readers. If you think they are
generally confusing to everyone, don't use them. Certainly we
shouldn't go about hacking pages so screen readers read things the way
one thinks they should - you'd never be done with this.

With that said, I suppose <abbr> is an acceptable way to go about it.
As Yukka notes, ensure the title attribute contains the text as it
would be read (e.g., Super Bowl <abbr title="46">XLVI</abbr>). Most
screen readers don't do anything special with this unless the default
settings are changed. Again, just using "Super Bowl 46" is easier for
everyone.

Using <dfn> seems like quite a stretch - and I don't think it has any
accessibility support in screen readers, except for VoiceOver which
tends to annoyingly read title on most everything.

Jared