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

for

From: Jonathan Cohn
Date: Apr 16, 2018 1:57PM

I seem to remember some voice CSS code that was supposed to force reading by character or some equivalent. I never really tested it, and my memory is that only VoiceOver supported the library.

I am at a point where I could test with NVDA/JAWS/VoiceOver right now if somebody can find this in a CodePan.

Jonathan

> On Apr 16, 2018, at 2:32 PM, JR Accessibility < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> (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.
> > > >