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Re: funny reading of CAD 1 by NVDA

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From: Steve Green
Date: Nov 9, 2017 5:15PM

Yes, it's very common. One of my favourites was on the Slack website last year, but sadly it's been replaced. As part of the main heading, JAWS was saying "three hundred million Argentinian Pesos" when there was nothing of the sort on screen. This had me stumped for some time until I turned off styles and saw "300 Mars" on screen - the "300" was something to do with some SVGs that were not visible on screen or in the source code. Basically, JAWS was interpreting the string "300 Mars" as "300M ARS".

The text to speech engines use all sorts of heuristics to identify telephone numbers, dates and other strings so they can read them in an appropriate manner. A lot of the time they get it right, but like any heuristic they can sometimes be wrong.

Steve Green

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Andrews, David B (DEED)
Sent: 09 November 2017 20:58
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] funny reading of CAD 1 by NVDA

Yes, it is a text to speech engine thing, not a screen reader thing. Depending on the TTS you can get things like doctor for DR (drive) etc. Most screen readers have an exceptions dictionary where you can make substitutions if it is a problem

David Andrews | Chief Technology Officer Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development State Services for the Blind
2200 University Ave West, Suite 240, St. Paul MN 55114
Direct: 651-539-2294
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Angela French
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2017 2:29 PM
To: WebAim Forum ( <EMAIL REMOVED> ) < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] funny reading of CAD 1 by NVDA

I am doing some testing with NVDA of a college programs application we are working on. I had to chuckle with amusement when NVDA read "CAD 1" as "Canadian dollar." !!

Of course, if you are reading this email with NVDA it will do it as you read this. But the CAD is the acronym for Computer Aided Design.

Anyone ever encountered weird stuff like that before?




Angela French
Internet/Intranet Specialist
Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
360-704-4316
<EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
www.sbctc.edu<;http://www.sbctc.edu/>;