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

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From: Léonie Watson
Date: Jan 21, 2014 3:00PM

Paul Bohman wrote:
"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."

Have commented on the post, but in case it's of interest to the discussion
here...


There are definitely improvements that the TTS engines used by screen
readers could make in terms of punctuation. A couple of thoughts on the
rest...

For new screen reader users, too much punctuation can be overwhelming. It
adds to the "noise" of the page, and can actually make it harder to
understand content.

The default punctuation settings are only used when reading content in
chunks (page, paragraph, sentence etc.). If someone wants to know what
punctuation is being used, they can navigate the content by character to
find out.

In my experience, the reaction from web developers is always strongest when
there is too much punctuation being announced. It's completely unexpected
because most sighted people assume a screen reader will talk like someone
reading aloud. The inevitable result is that (with every goodintention)
developers stop using punctuation properly.

Léonie.
-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Paul Bohman
Sent: 21 January 2014 20:11
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-punctuatio
n-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
messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>