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Screen reader indications of underlined or strike-through text

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From: Dana Douglas
Date: Jun 17, 2014 1:02PM

Greetings,

We've come across an interesting issue regarding how screen readers indicate underlined or strike-through text on a web page. In the context (legal documentation), this kind of information is vital to the user so they can tell what text has been removed (strike-through) and what text has been added (underline). From what we can tell, aside from hard coding this information into the site, it is our understanding that you can typically change a setting in your screen reader to have it indicate "begin underline" and "end underline" at the beginning and end of a section of underlined (or strike-through) text. Does anyone know if there are also settings for changing the pitch or volume to indicate such or would that be too confusing with pitch changes for upper-case and lower-case letters and words?

Otherwise, does anyone know of any different ways to provide this type of indication? Any insight or suggestions are welcome!

Thank you!

Dana Douglas