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Re: screen readers and notation for science

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Nov 2, 2015 6:31AM

> My question is regarding screen-reader compatibility for webpages about scientific concepts. Genetics alleles like *Bb*, *bB*, *bb*, and *BB*, or chemical compounds like Pb(NO3)2 could be confusing because the capitalization and parentheses are important for the meaning. Is there anything special I should be doing when putting this type of content on a webpage?

I wish technologies such as Aural CSS were supported by more screen readers other than VoiceOver. This could allow you to indicate how letters and punctuation should be pronounced separately. By adding text like capital it makes the Braille reading experience much less efficient and in some cases and perhaps harder to "visualize". To my knowledge there aren't a lot of great options. Perhaps you could allow the user to toggle that extra information or remove it to help beginning and advanced users.

Jonathan

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Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group
<EMAIL REMOVED>

703-637-8957 (o)
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