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

for

From: Lucy Greco
Date: Jan 21, 2014 4:22PM

That’s an exhalent addition to this do you mind if I quote you as well
thanks Lucy

Lucia Greco
Web Access Analyst
IST-Campus Technology Services
University of California, Berkeley
(510) 289-6008 skype: lucia1-greco
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu Http://accessaces.com
Follow me on twitter @accessaces


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Léonie Watson
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 2:01 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] The punctuation and typographic symbols that screen
readers don't read

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-punctuat
io
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
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