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Re: Proper Unicode or html entity for negative sign

for

From: Laura Roberts
Date: Mar 14, 2023 11:54AM

There is − but will read as minus.

When I want it to read as negative, I use Aria hidden text and then alt
text.

Alternately, I suppose you could use the abbr title tag to do it, but I'm
not clear on the WCAG rules around which is best standards for that-
entities, Unicode, abbreviation titles, aria. (I specialize in pdf's).
Hopefully someone will weigh in because I'd like to know)

https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_abbr.asp

On Tue, Mar 14, 2023, 11:21 AM Elizabeth Thomas < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

>
> Does anyone know the correct Unicode or HTML entity for the negative sign
> (e.g., to represent the number negative 19)? The context is a negative
> number used in a sentence; it’s not in a mathematical expression or
> equation.
> I know I could use the hyphen, but that will be ignored by many
> technologies because it’s wrong and that’s not what hyphens are for.
> Consequently, I don’t think it will be clear to some people that the number
> is negative.
> I could use Unicode entity 2212, but that looks super weird and I’m not
> sure that’s correct because that’s for the minus operator.
> Is there another entity I can use that will be read correctly by AT like a
> screen reader? Or is the Unicode entity 2212 the correct character for this
> use case? Or Is hyphen minus (002D) the correct entity? (I’m definitely not
> using the en dash, which is for ranges as it means “to” or “through”).
> Thanks in advance. Math accessibility is hard (but fun). ;)
> -Elizabeth Thomas
> Digital Accessibility Specialist, State of NJ
> > > > >