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Re: Forcing screen reader pronunciation of abbreviation important to a brand

for

From: JR Accessibility
Date: Apr 16, 2018 12:32PM

(Sorry this isn't a reply to the long email chain I started... I couldn't
figure out how to do that from the digest mode messages.)

Continuing the topic of "Forcing screen reader pronunciation of
abbreviation important to a brand."

I partially agree with the sentiment that this is only a problem if real
users are having a problem, but it's also a significant concern to certain
brands.

For example, take the the abbreviation NW or 'northwest' as some screen
readers will insist on pronouncing it. In the case of a preferred customer
program called MyNW, some screen readers will insist this is 'my
northwest'. If you are in the banking industry, this could get mixed up
with Northwest Bank (and yes, that's a real bank).

Another example: SW or 'southwest' depending on screen reader. 'MySW' is
going to be pronounced 'my southwest' by some screen readers. Does this
refer to a customer program for the major airline company that owns the URL
www.southwest.com ? That seems really confusing, particularly if the
customer belong to the Southwest Airlines program and is also shopping some
other site with the initials SW.

For the record, I cannot get any of the proposed solutions involving spans
and aria-labels to work with out-of-the-box JAWS and NVDA. My JAWS and NVDA
continue to insist upon pronouncing NW, SW, SE, and NE in their own ways
regardless of what markup I put around those letters.