WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: The punctuation and typographic symbols that screen readers don't read

for

From: Paul Bohman
Date: Jan 21, 2014 1:51PM

>
> "screen readers will say dash instead of zero"
>

Oops. I meant to say that screen readers will say dash instead of minus.


Paul Bohman, PhD
Director of Training
Deque Systems, Inc
www.deque.com
703-225-0380, ext.121


On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 3:20 PM, Lucy Greco < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hello:
> I am writing a similar post and will link to yours if you don't mind
> however my post is when at brakes access should be out in a few days at
> most
>
> Lucia Greco
> Web Access Analyst
> IST-Campus Technology Services
> University of California, Berkeley
> (510) 289-6008 skype: lucia1-greco
> http://webaccess.berkeley.edu
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Paul Bohman
> Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 12:11 PM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: [WebAIM] The punctuation and typographic symbols that screen
> readers don't read
>
> Screen readers can do a lot better job at reading punctuation and
> typographic symbols. I decided to document what screen readers do and
> don't
> read. The results are not very encouraging.
>
> Here is the blog entry:
> http://www.deque.com/dont-screen-readers-read-whats-screen-part-1-punctuat
> ion-typographic-symbols
>
> There is only a short list of punctuation marks and typographic symbols
> that are read reliably across the brands of screen readers, making it
> really hard for web developers to trust screen readers to convey the
> intended meaning.
>
> For example, if you write 1+1=2 (one plus one equals two), NVDA says only
> "one one two" at its default verbosity setting. And if you write 1-1=0
> (one
> minus one equals zero), screen readers will say dash instead of zero, even
> if you use the HTML entity for the minus symbol: &minus;
>
> And JAWS will read several characters incorrectly, saying "equals" where
> it
> should say "less than or equal to" and "tilde" where it should say "almost
> equal to" and others. These are bugs that need to be fixed.
>
> The results are not limited to just math symbols. There are in fact very
> few HTML entities and typographic symbols that all screen readers read
> correctly.
>
> More details in the blog post.
>
> Paul Bohman, PhD
> Director of Training
> Deque Systems, Inc
> www.deque.com
> 703-225-0380, ext.121
> > > > > > >