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Re: Hints for screen reader speech attributes

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: May 4, 2020 5:33AM

You should be able to use <em> or <strong> or a similar HTML text
semantic element to indicate special emphasis, however screen readers
do not support text level semantics (except Jaws and then only for
very advanced users who change voice profiles, which is probably one
in 10,000).
I've been nagging about this for years but nothing happens.
It's a fine balance between authors trying to over compensate the
screen reader experience, e.g. through unnecessary hidden text and not
being able to communicate important things to screen readers.
For instance, if you insert text such as "start of italic" you force
all screen reader users to listen to a lot of clunky verbiage.
The silly examples mentioned here are screen reader dictionaries who
try to interpret commonly used phrases to make a better experience,
and fail. With Voiceover on iOS 3m is always read as "3 meters" not,
for instance, "3 minutes".
I agree that authors need to be able to affect the screen reader
handling of certain words and patterns, and I believe this should be
doable via using the proper HTML (i.e. text level semantics), (which
should be supported) or through speech CSS, which is why I find that
ongoing work particularly interesting.



On 5/4/20, Murphy, Sean < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> I normally don't use these settings and I am working from memory.
>
> Jaws, VoiceOver Mac and NVDA can announce the font attribute like italic as
> a word.
>
> Jaws has a sound scheme which can change the pitch, synth (TTS) being used,
> etc. Not sure if NVDA without a plugin, VoiceOver for Mac does this. iOS
> VoiceOver and Talkback from memory does not support this capability.
>
> The caveat to the above is if the screen reader supports the font attributes
> or tags in the first place.
>
> Sean
>
>
>
> Sean Murphy | Digital System specialist (Accessibility)
> Telstra Digital Channels | Digital Systems
> Mobile: 0405 129 739 | Desk: (02) 9866-7917
>
>