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Re: how to get acronyms to not read as words in an altattribute

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: May 8, 2013 8:30PM

Sometimes it is not even up to the screen reader, but the TTS engine
used, how acronyms and pronounciation of non-dictionary words is
handled.
I have been working with a major TTS provider for an Icelandic TTS
engine, and we have run into many a discussion on these points.
They prefer not to expand acronyms or interpret them, they say in
their experience it conuses more users than it helps.
If your license plate number is GE459 you don't want to have your
screen reader babble on about General Electric.
In short, there is basically no way to predict how all the diferent
screen readers with their verbosity settings and TTS engines, even in
multiple languages, read or interpret your acronyms, so keeping and
not getting creative for screen readers is about the best you can do.
Some screen readers recognize emotocons, but only in certain
applications (Jaws recognizes all of these in MSN, or used to, but if
the same appears in an email or text, it is treated as its underlying
symbols or translated into a question mark, at least in IE9 with Jaws
14).
Cheers
-B

On 5/8/13, Tim Harshbarger < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> If you are not use to listening to a screen reader all day, how it
> pronounces some words can be a surprise. However, one thing to remember is
> that when you do spend all the time listening to a screen reader, you become
> use to those odd pronunciations. The only time acronyms and abbreviations
> are a problem is when you don't know what in the world they mean.
>
> An interesting side fact is that, if you listen carefully to someone who
> uses a screen reader all the time, you can sometimes hear them using the
> same odd pronunciations that their screen readers do. I've done that a few
> times. In fact, I've got into the habit of altering the pronunciation of
> people's names in the screen readers dictionary because I have caught myself
> pronouncing their name the way the screen reader does without thinking--and
> of course they have no clue who I am talking about.
>
> > > >