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Re: Quick Poll for JAWs users: Verbosity and Punctuation settings.

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Aug 13, 2012 12:58PM

Sailesh Panchang wrote:
>
> John,
> Verbosity and punctuation are user preferences and should not be a
> concern. Users may set different preferences from time to time or from
> application to application or from task to task.

I am aware of this, which is why I posed the question in the first place - I
am trying to get a sense of what user preferences are when surfing the web.


> And some do not like to change them.
> What is important is that visible text and off-screen text should not
> run together / appear concatenated for AT users.

Agreed, to the point that we will inject a non-breaking space -   - at
the start of hidden text to specifically avoid that problem in at least one
combination of browser and screen reader.


> One should use space / hyphens / parenthesis as one would use them
> normally to serve as separators.

Except - and this is why I am asking - it is appearing that virtually no
user is benefitting from the use of parenthesis in hidden text. In my
limited testing, and based on this quick poll results, the only time that
hidden text (that is, text hidden from visual view, intended exclusively for
screen reader users) actually enunciates the opening and closing parenthesis
is under the edge case of the Read Everything verbosity settings, that is
rarely used when surfing the web.

To keep this in context, the question is whether or not an EDITORIAL
standard for this type of text should MANDATE the use of parenthesis. The
feedback I have received to date suggests not, but I am still open to
reasons why that should change. If there is no practical benefit - and I
mean practical - then we can leave this as an editorial choice.

Cheers!

JF