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Re: [EXTERNAL]Forcing screen reader pronunciation of abbreviationimportant to a brand

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Apr 15, 2018 11:41AM

USAA has a table of commonly used abbreviations and instructions on
how to add them to Jaws and NVDA dictionaries:
https://www.usaa.com/inet/pages/accessibility_at_usaa_main?akredirect=true
(you have to expand the desktop help section to see the tables).
This is a somewhat leftfield approach, but I find it interesting for
issues where screen reader pronounciation of words or abbreviations
cannot be explicitly forced by the author.
You can even put a sentence about adding common acronyms to
dictionaries on the homepage of your site, you can visually hide it.
Granted, I don't know if Voiceover offers custom pronounciation
dictionaries, I've never come across one.
Of course the real solution is for the author to code to spec and user
agents implementing that spec correctly.
I have had quite a few rants on here about how I think holding web
developers responsible for working around user agent shortcomings
implementing published standards is making accessibility difficult,
costly, and unreliable, but I'll let it go for now *grin*.



On 4/13/18, Tim Harshbarger < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Personally, I would recommend not altering how the screen reader pronounces
> the acronym--unless you have specific evidence that demonstrates that it is
> causing problems for your users.
>
> Those of us who rely on screen readers are actually quite familiar with how
> screen readers pronounce or mispronounce words. In fact, the only time I
> think I know of where such a thing created more than just a minor nuisance
> was when the actual word and the mispronounced word both fit the context.
> For example, NE. In the context of directions having NVDA read NE as
> northeast when it could mean either the direction or an acronym for a
> company would be confusing. NVDA saying "northeast" for NE in a context
> where it would only refer to the company's acronym would not.
>
> Again I wouldn't spend time trying to do this unless you have specific
> information indicating that it is causing problems for screen reader users.
>
> Thanks,
> Tim
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf
> Of JP Jamous
> Sent: Friday, April 13, 2018 12:39 PM
> To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [WebAIM] Forcing screen reader pronunciation of
> abbreviationimportant to a brand
>
> Thanks for clarifying it. I actually did not test it before sending it out,
> as I was in the middle of something. I wrote it out of memory to help point
> him in the right direction.
>
> Thank you for the extra knowledge.
>
>
>
> --------------------
> JP Jamous
> Senior Digital Accessibility Engineer
> E-Mail Me |Join My LinkedIn Network
> --------------------
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen
> walker
> Sent: Friday, April 13, 2018 11:39 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Forcing screen reader pronunciation of abbreviation
> important to a brand
>
> You may have limited success specifying an aria-label for a <span> element.
> A span doesn't have a role so its accessible name is not normally computed
> so the aria-label is often ignored.
>
> Also, when you split up your sentence with a <span>, that causes a "tab
> stop" for VoiceOver (at least on iOS). When you swipe right through the
> sentence, it'll stop when it hits the <span>. You then have to swipe again
> to read the span, then swipe again to read the rest of the sentence.
>
> You can try adding a role="text" to the <p>. That might be considered a
> "hack" but it solves both problems on iOS. It reads the aria-label and it
> treats the entire sentence as one block instead of splitting it up.
>
> <p role="text">
> You have purchased <span aria-label=" N E 1254"> NE1254</span> for
> $300.
> </p>
>
> You'd have to play with JAWS and NVDA to see how well it works there. When
> I tried your original example, NE was pronounced as N E instead of northeast
> or knee, so I couldn't tell if my solution worked.
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 13, 2018 at 9:53 AM, JP Jamous < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> You can accomplish this by various ways. It depends on the situation
>> you have at hand. The bottom line is you use ARIA to hijack the HTML
>> element.
>> It may not be the best method from a semantic prospective, but it gets
>> the job done.
>>
>> For example if I have a paragraph:
>>
>> <p>
>> You have purchased NE1254 for $300.
>> </p>
>> You can hijack NE1254 using ARIA.
>>
>> <p>
>> You have purchased
>> <span aria-label=" N E 1254">
>> NE1254</span>
>> for $300.
>> </p>
>>
>> I hope that helps.
>>
>> --------------------
>> JP Jamous
>> Senior Digital Accessibility Engineer
>> E-Mail Me |Join My LinkedIn Network
>> --------------------
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
>> JR Accessibility
>> Sent: Friday, April 13, 2018 8:55 AM
>> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> Subject: [WebAIM] Forcing screen reader pronunciation of abbreviation
>> important to a brand
>>
>> Is it possible to force a screen reader to pronounce a two-letter
>> abbreviation a certain way, rather than the way the screen reader
>> software wants to pronounce it?
>>
>> In a previous WebAIM discussion from 2014, Geri Druckman suggested
>> using the HTML <abbr> tag, but I cannot get that to work.
>> https://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?threadb65
>>
>>
>> For the sake of example suppose my company's name is Nova-Echo but we
>> go by NE (which should be pronounced 'N E') in our product numbers and
>> in our preferred customer program, MyNE (which should be pronounced 'My N
>> E').
>>
>> The default pronunciation of the letters 'N' and 'E' next to each
>> other in NVDA is 'northeast' and in JAWS it is 'knee'. This leads to
>> undesirable pronunciations of our product numbers, such as 'northeast
>> 1234' or 'knee 1234', and of our preferred customer program 'my northeast'
>> or 'my knee'.
>>
>> How can we force the screen readers to pronounce these items the way
>> we want them to?
>>
>>
>> I have placed some sample HTML on my Google Drive, that contains
>> additional
>> examples:
>> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SiAN6ewa70q9L_SqmcxIwIuYQv_
>> mEKRr/view?usp=sharing
>>
>> Also a spreadsheet with the pronunciations I observed in NVDA and JAWS:
>> https://drive.google.com/open?idC3RhocHOdtuGJ0uopLfQtGA4EF3p
>> WEusM_ANYQB9Kc
>>
>> Thank you very much.
>> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >>
>> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >>
> > > http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >
> > > > > > > > >


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