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JWAS and special characters pronunciation

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From: Druckman,Geri
Date: Dec 31, 2013 1:36PM

Hi,

I am testing a medically related site about gene mutations. Some of the text contains special charters in Greek (e.g., the character Alpha).
I have added the symbol and the proper pronunciation to the JAWS dictionary, I tested it with both character encoding α and α both work very well as an individual character, and JAWS will indeed read "alpha", but when it is part of a word it will read it as "ah".

So a gene named p110(enter here a symbol for alpha) will be read as "pe one hundred ten ah", though when arrowed through the word it will read "pe one one zero alpha".

Any ideas how to encode the page (HTML) in such a way, or make JAWS properly read "pe one hundred ten alpha"?
This will help with other scientific paper (encoded in HTML for online reading) that have other special characters.

Thank you, and a Happy New Year!

Geri Druckman
Web Development Specialist - Accessibility
Department of Internet Services
MD Anderson Cancer Center
T 713-792-6293 | F 713-745-8134