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

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Aug 13, 2012 3:12PM

Sailesh Panchang wrote:
>
> If the visible linked text is "Annual Report 2012-13" and just for
> argument sake, one decides to convey that it opens in a new window, I
> suppose one would want some sort of a separator there hyphen or
> parenthesis... regardless of whether the text is visible or not.
> So it should be "Annual Report 2012-13 (opens new window)" for
> instance.
> Now if one wishes to keep that notification off-screen, fine, no
> problems.

So you have hit on a plausible use-case, as yes, we do something similar.
HOWEVER, with or without the parenthesis the screen readers I've tested -
with normal or expert verbosity settings - do not pause or announce that the
parenthesis are there. Since this is the case, is there a need to MANDATE
their use, as neither the screen-reader user nor a sighted person will see
them? Include them, don't include them, sure, but that is not the question.
The question is, "should it be mandated from an editorial perspective that
all off-screen text MUST be placed in parenthesis?"

The emergent answer is no.

JF