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Re: Screen readers and telephone numbers

for

From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Mar 3, 2003 12:24PM



On Monday, March 3, 2003, at 09:25 AM, Paul Bohman wrote:

> Ideally screen readers would be able to recognize phone numbers. Home
> Page
> Reader *does* read phone numbers correctly (pronouncing each number
> individually). Window Eyes does not. I don't believe JAWS does either,
> but I
> don't currently have it installed.
>

Actually, recognition of phone numbers can be difficult when you factor
in
international numbers.

I would say instead that "ideally, screen readers would support Aural
style
sheets."

The speak-numeral CSS property is intended to address this very
question:

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/aural.html#propdef-speak-numeral

'speak-numeral'

Value: digits | continuous | inherit
Initial: continuous
Applies to: all elements
Inherited: yes
Percentages: N/A
Media: aural

This property controls how numerals are spoken. Values have
the following meanings:

digits
Speak the numeral as individual digits. Thus, "237" is
spoken "Two Three Seven".

continuous
Speak the numeral as a full number. Thus, "237" is
spoken "Two hundred thirty seven". Word
representations are language-dependent.

Unfortunately, no screen readers support this, and even more
unfortunately,
the W3C has taken steps away from encouraging Aural CSS implementation
and use with the issuance of CSS 2.1.

As a stopgap measure, you could do something like this, in supported CSS
and HTML:

<span class="auralspacer"> </span>5<span class="auralspacer">
</span>5-<span
class="auralspacer"> </span>1<span class="auralspacer"> </span>2<span
class="auralspacer"> </span>1<span class="auralspacer"> </span>2

.auralspacer { display: none; }

@media all {
.auralspacer { display: inline; } }

@media screen {
.auralspacer { display: none; } }

@media print {
.auralspacer { display: none; } }

In theory, this would make the markup look like this:

5 5 5- 1 2 1 2

Which hopefully would be read as "five five five one two one two".

But when displayed on the screen or printed, it would look like this:

555-1212

Nassssty nassssty hack. But that's what happens when you don't have
support for good and necessary standards, such as Aural CSS. In ACSS,
you'd just do this:

<span class="phonenumber">555-1212</span>

.phonenumber { speak-numeral: digits; }

--Kynn


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