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Re: JWAS and special characters pronunciation

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From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Jan 1, 2014 11:01PM

Great comments, Birkir.
I think the world is ripe for pressing for accessible STEM materials. This
could easily be a successful campaign that would benefit all AT users and
open the doors for many students to enter higher-paying tech and science
jobs. What a revolution that would be for the community!

<< PDF/Word/other formats require their own standards >>
I'm not going to assume that.
In fact, I think Word, PowerPoint, InDesign, and Acrobat PDF should have the
same accessibility tags and standards as HTML.

Example: I have never been able to find a good reason why the PDF
accessibility tag for lists is the generic <L>, while HTML defines 2 list
tags, <UL> and <OL>. It's as if Adobe invented its own wheel rather than
using HTML's perfectly good wheel. No additional value was added by
switching to <L>, and the consequence to AT developers is that they now must
write code to recognize all three variations of list tags.

The accessible STEM issue is large, but I believe if we break it down into
logical segments, that is identify the accessibility feature that would have
the greatest impact with the least cost or retooling, it can be done, one
step at a time.

To me, accurate voicing and recognition of Unicode characters is the first
step because 1) almost everything else hinges on it, including Math ML, and
2) the identifiers are already defined by the Unicode standard itself.
Example: the 2 pi characters, one for Greek language and the other for math.
We just need the AT manufacturers to pick up that info from the Unicode
font. It would also help to get this concept of using the correct Unicode
character as a standard in WCAG.

And then we have to teach those who create documents how to use the correct
character in their documents. Not difficult, but it does require some
training to understand why they have to choose the correct pi and how to
choose the correct pi.

There are hundreds more characters like the 2 pi characters in Unicode.

—Bevi Chagnon

PS: Birkir, have you had bacon and egg cups? Had them this morning for New
Year's brunch. It's a muffin-shaped bacon cup (also called a bacon bowl)
filled with egg, cheese, guacamole, etc. My apologies to the vegans and
vegetarians on the list. And to the dieters, too.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Mini-Bacon-Cups/ and
https://www.buyperfectbacon.com/

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