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

for

From: Jonathan Cohn
Date: Apr 15, 2018 12:46PM

For Macintosh VoiceOver:
1. Open VoiceOver Utility with Control-option-F8
2. Switch to Speech panel command-three
3. Switch to pronunciation tab.

There you find a table with four columns:
Original, Prononciation, Case Sensitive, Application.

I understand that IOS 11 also has a voiceover pronunciation dictionary but I have never reviewed that.

Best wishes,

Jonathan Cohn



> On Apr 15, 2018, at 1:41 PM, Birkir R. Gunnarsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> 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
>> >>
>> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >>
>
>
> --
> Work hard. Have fun. Make history.
> > > >