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Re: Special Characters

for

From: Goldie Freeman
Date: Aug 23, 2001 2:26PM

And how about ™
As far as I can see it renders in NN & IE.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Goddard" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM forum" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 3:34 PM
Subject: Re: Special Characters

> What about just using ASCII code for this? I believe for Windows PC the
> ASCII code for the trademark symbol is "alt-0153" and for the Macintosh is
> is "Option-2"
>
> Will this work? It renders fine in browsers as far as I can tell.
>
> Michael
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Paul Bohman" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> To: "WebAIM forum" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 3:32 PM
> Subject: RE: Special Characters
>
>
> > [Holly] A situation came up where I had a company name with the small
> > Trademark
> > "TM" following it.
> >
> > however in NN4.78 the special character code name - & trade ; - did
> > not work and the character code showed on the page
> >
> > [Paul] It's true. Netscape 4.x does not do html special characters very
> > well.
> >
> > [Holly] I have been given some ideas and recall other ways to work this.
> >
> > use the numeric character codes-- "& #153 ;" or "& #8482 ;"
> > or use html...
> > Company <small > < sup >TM < /sup > < /small >
> >
> > etc. I suppose I could toss a title="trademark" or alt="trademark" in
> > the sup tag?
> >
> > [Paul] The above would probably work alright.
> >
> > [Holly] or make a small image gif with alt="trademark" in it too.
> >
> > [Paul] This is my least favorite of the examples that you gave, because,
> > even though not all the special characters work in Netscape 4.x, they do
> > exist, and it is better to use the real thing, I think, rather than a
> > graphic.
> >
> > [Holly] Do screen readers support and read special character sets or
code?
> > And if they do read these codes, do they translate a copy symbol code to
> > copyright, and trade to trademark or the number coding to the
> > appropriate full symbol?
> >
> > [Paul] Jaws and Home Page Reader support many of the HTML special
> > characters, such as trademark, copyright, dollar, yen, euro, pound,
> section,
> > and others. They don't support some of the lesser-used characters. Both
> Jaws
> > and HPR read the full expansion of the special characters.
> >
> > [Holly] Which would be the best way to display and code for these items?
> My
> > thinking is that without an alt or title attribute around the letters -
> > TM, - will end up sounding like - T and M - and may not be clear into
> > all..
> >
> > [Paul] My preference would be to use the official characters (e.g.
> &trade;).
> > I know that they won't show up correctly in Netscape 4.x, but they show
up
> > just fine in the current version of Netscape (6.1), as well as in
Opera.
> > They are pronounced correctly by modern screen readers, and they are
> > meaningful in a textual sense. A graphic of a trademark symbol does not
> have
> > the same semantic purpose as the real symbol, even if they look the same
> > visually. Some people may have a stronger desire to have things look
right
> > in older, out-of-date browsers than I do. Most assistive technologies do
> not
> > work well with Netscape 4.x, so from a disability access perspective, I
> > consider Netscape to be much less important. On the other hand (I can
> argue
> > both sides here), you might say that people who use the special
characters
> > which are not supported by Netscape 4.x are excluding the users of
> Netscape
> > from full accessibility. This is a valid point, but it is a point that
> > concerns me much less, when you are only talking about trademark
symbols,
> > copyright symbols and such. To me, these are important in a legal sense,
> but
> > not really in other ways.
> >
> >
> > [Holly] Is unicode supported by all readers or most? what about math
> symbols
> > for
> > squared and cubed and also fractions and other math symbols?
> >
> > [Paul] Math is another animal. There are special characters for "divided
> > by", "multiplied by" and so on. These are read well by screen readers.
If
> > you get more complex than that, however, things quickly enter a new
arena
> of
> > complexity and in accessibility. There is a markup language called
MathML
> > which has been developed so that equations can be marked up successfully
> and
> > accurately on the Web. The only browser of which I am aware which
supports
> > MathML is Amaya, the experimental browser of the W3C. There are plug-ins
> > which can be purchased from IBM and other vendors which allow MathML to
be
> > rendered in a browser, but none of them are accessible to screen
readers.
> > There is also a project which is trying to come up with solutions for
the
> > math markup problem by converting equations into audio output. From what
I
> > understand, this is still a work in progress. At this point, I have to
> admit
> > that I don't know what the best solution for math equations is, other
than
> > providing a pre-recorded audio file. Of course, this still shuts out
those
> > who access the content through Braille alone.
> >
> > Paul Bohman
> > Technology Coordinator
> > WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
> > www.webaim.org
> > Utah State University
> > www.usu.edu
> >
> >
> > thanks,
> > Holly
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>