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Re: JWAS and special characters pronunciation

for

From: Druckman,Geri
Date: Jan 2, 2014 11:01AM

So after testing with a dash, and hidden text space (using display: none;
for a hidden space/gap still read in JAWS as "pe one hundred ten ah"),
which neither worked the way I wanted it, I tried also Sarah's suggestion
using abbreviation, and <abbr title="p110 &alpha;">p110&alpha;</abbr>
(note the space in the abbreviation title attribute) worked perfectly!
Thank you Sarah for that! And it's also searchable in the proper string
format.

There's minor catch, reading abbreviations is not enabled by default in
JAWS. Without enabling it JAWS ignores the existence of the <abbr> tag.
Maybe Freedom Scientific should make it a default checked option, or is
there a specific reason why it is unchecked by default?.

Now all that said, as Murphy's law says "If you have 10 problems, and you
find a solution for each one of those 10 problems, the 10th solution will
generate an 11th problem". This solution works well in Internet Explorer
where the <abbr> tag is not showing as underlined to none A.T. users
(Chorme doesn't show it, and JAWS doesn't "see" in Chrome either, but then
again, JAWS is optimized for Internet Explorer). In FireFox on the other
hand, it's a different story, first JAWS does not read the <abbr> tag when
using FireFox, and second FireFox will abbreviations as underlined, since
<abbr> is using the title attribute, which makes this solution, for
sighted FireFox users, look awkward.

So what is the lesser "evil"? A solution that works in one particular
browser for A.T. users, but will make a page look awkwardly "peppered"
with underlined, meaningless words to sighted users in a different browser?

After doing some googling (Thank you Larry and Sergey, what would I have
done without you guys?!), here's is what I came up with, which works
nicely in Internet Explorer, and doesn't make it look ugly in FireFox.
Sadly this will not work in anything else but web pages, but it's a start.

In the HTML I used:

<abbr title="p110 &alpha;">p110&alpha;</abbr>

Then to remove the line decoration (Hint: it's NOT {text-decoration:
none;}), I added in the CSS:

abbr[title] {border-bottom-width: 0;}

Eureka! It works!

Thank you all for your valuable input!


Geri Druckman

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






On 1/2/14 9:40 AM, "Bourne, Sarah (ITD)" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

>Imagine I were trying to search for "p110$B&A(B" (with or without AT.) Any
>workaround for screenreaders that breaks that string into separate
>"words" could break its findability by search. For instance, inserting
>even a very, teeny, tiny space would make it "p110" and "$B&A(B" to a search
>engine. I would lean towards including instructions for screen reader
>users, such as recommendations for configuring the dictionary and
>suggesting reading non-common words or numbers character-by-character
>when accuracy is essential.
>
>It might stretch the definition of "abbreviation," but perhaps you could
>use ABBR, and have the TITLE spell out the correct pronunciation? For
>instance, <abbr title="p 100 alpha"> p110$B&A(B </abbr>
>
>(I have no idea how search engines handle multiple Unicode names and
>other encodings for characters that appear to be the same. That makes my
>head to hurt to think of!)
>
>sb
>Sarah E. Bourne
>Director of Assistive Technology &
>Mass.Gov Chief Technology Strategist
>Information Technology Division
>Commonwealth of Massachusetts
>1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
>617-626-4502
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>http://www.mass.gov/itd
>
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