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Thread: Pipe characters and screenreaders
Number of posts in this thread: 12 (In chronological order)
From: Dean Hamack
Date: Wed, Dec 03 2008 10:55PM
Subject: Pipe characters and screenreaders
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Just out of curiosity, what if anything does a screenreader speak when it
encounters a pipe (|) character?
From: Peter Krantz
Date: Thu, Dec 04 2008 12:05AM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screenreaders
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On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 6:51 AM, Dean Hamack < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, what if anything does a screenreader speak when it
> encounters a pipe (|) character?
Jaws (at least in older versions) outputs "Vertical bar". For some
other characters see/listen here:
http://www.standards-schmandards.com/2004/title-text-separators/
(That article is old by now, but most characters should be output in
the same way).
Regards,
Peter
From: David Andrews
Date: Thu, Dec 04 2008 6:15AM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screenreaders
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There is one other consideration. Some, if not many screen reader
users turn down the level of verbosity for punctuation for at least
some of the time. That is not every character is voiced. Unless you
are programming, doing editing etc., you may not need every character
voiced. So, if you are using them to convey something important,
they could be missed by some screen reader users.
Dave
At 01:05 AM 12/4/2008, you wrote:
>On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 6:51 AM, Dean Hamack < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> > Just out of curiosity, what if anything does a screenreader speak when it
> > encounters a pipe (|) character?
>
>Jaws (at least in older versions) outputs "Vertical bar". For some
>other characters see/listen here:
>
>http://www.standards-schmandards.com/2004/title-text-separators/
>
>(That article is old by now, but most characters should be output in
>the same way).
>
>Regards,
>
>Peter
>
From: Moore, Michael
Date: Thu, Dec 04 2008 11:35AM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screenreaders
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JAWS (all versions) says "verticle bar" it can get a bit tedious after a while but you learn to tune it out. This character is frequently used to separate adjacent links, WCAG 1.0, but is really not necessary with any modern screen readers.
Mike
From: Dean Hamack
Date: Thu, Dec 04 2008 11:45AM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screenreaders
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Yes, I agree that hearing "vertical bar" over and over would be quite
annoying. One of the things I did in my last corporate contract was remove
all of the pipes and replace them with css borders. My argument was that
they are purely aesthetic objects, therefore they shouldn't be hardcoded
into the page.
I got a lot of resistance, because it's hard to style borders to look the
same as pipes. Had I had this information then, it probably would have been
easier to win the argument. That's why this list is so helpful.
On 12/4/08 10:29 AM, "Moore, Michael" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:
> JAWS (all versions) says "verticle bar" it can get a bit tedious after a while
> but you learn to tune it out. This character is frequently used to separate
> adjacent links, WCAG 1.0, but is really not necessary with any modern screen
> readers.
From: Jared Smith
Date: Thu, Dec 04 2008 12:55PM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screenreaders
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On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Moore, Michael
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> This character is frequently used to separate adjacent links
A grouping of adjacent links sure sounds like an unordered list to me.
With CSS, you can linearize the list and either replace the 'bullet'
with a pipe character image (which will not be read), add a pipe
character background images, or display a border between the list
elements. You get the same visual affect, but without the screen
reader issues. Plus, you get a more semantically correct, more easily
navigable structure in your document.
Jared Smith
WebAIM
From: Dean Hamack
Date: Fri, Dec 05 2008 11:30AM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screenreaders (form field redux)
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So I was lying awake last night, and something occurred to me regarding the
discussion we had recently about required fields in forms. I'm assuming that
along these same lines, the screenreader reads "asterisk" when it encounters
the * character, correct?
If that's the case, someone filling out a form using asterisk characters to
delineate required form fields would hear the following:
"fields marked with an asterisk are required."
asterisk name, asterisk email address"
etc.
How is that not accessible? Maybe I missed something from that discussion,
but this seems like it would be crystal clear to me if I heard it.
On 12/3/08 11:05 PM, "Peter Krantz" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Jaws (at least in older versions) outputs "Vertical bar". For some
> other characters see/listen here:
>
> http://www.standards-schmandards.com/2004/title-text-separators/
>
> (That article is old by now, but most characters should be output in
> the same way).
From: Moore, Michael
Date: Fri, Dec 05 2008 11:35AM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screenreaders (form field redux)
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JAWS would say "Fields marked with a star are required" Then in the
form, "star same, star email address" Most users of screen readers are
comfortable with this approach. The most frequent error is that the
asterisk is placed outside of the label element, or the label element is
excluded entirely. These omissions cause real accessibility issues.
Mike
From: Karlen Communications
Date: Fri, Dec 05 2008 12:00PM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screen readers (form field redux)
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Remember that people using TTS who have learning or cognitive disabilities
also use auditory feedback for form controls. And that some natural phoneme
synthesizer have problems with "symbols" and often just ignore them.
"Star" may not be as obvious whereas there would be no doubt with the word
"required.".
I use a screen reader and personally prefer the word required in a field
because I then know I haven't read things too quickly. I also seldom read an
entire form so having "required" in the form control itself saves me time.
I think we have to remember that it is not only for screen readers that we
are doing this.
Cheers, Karen
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Fri, Dec 05 2008 12:25PM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screen readers (form field redux)
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Karlen Communications wrote:
> I use a screen reader and personally prefer the word required in a
> field because I then know I haven't read things too quickly. I also
> seldom read an entire form so having "required" in the form control
> itself saves me time.
Good point. Moreover, the asterisk character is often (in many fonts) fairly
unnoticeable, so if you use it to signal required fields, you might want to
use other visual clues as well, like bolding the field label.
I'm afraid that using a word like "required" is regarded by many as
naive-looking and not cool at all. For them, you might consider using an
image, consisting is a visually prominent star-like symbol, for example,
with an attribute value of "required" and with the same title attribute
value.
That's not ideal, but it might be a reasonable compromise.
On the other hand - and now I'm apologizing, I'm afraid - indicating fields
as required is not as crucial as many other issues. After all, any robust
design makes the form handler check the presence of required fields and
report missing fields clearly. And advanced design also uses client-side
pre-checking. Then again, most forms on the web are neither robust nor
advanced.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: Randall Pope
Date: Fri, Dec 05 2008 12:30PM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screen readers (form field redux)
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One needs to consider that many deaf-blind who cannot hear, will have to
read the entire word at their fingertip which can be tedious after reading
for a while. However in some situations, that is unavoidable.
It's very important to keep everything short and to the point. That
includes descriptions of links, images and others.
Randy
American Association of the Deaf-Blind
From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Fri, Dec 05 2008 3:15PM
Subject: Re: Pipe characters and screen readers (form field redux)
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"Yucca" Korpela wrote:
> Then again, most forms on the web are neither robust nor
> advanced.
Yes, many of us have to crawl until we can walk, Yucca.
And some of us must first roll over on our bellies so we will be able to crawl!
Sad, but true.
Cliff Tyllick
Web development coordinator
Agency Communications Division
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
512-239-4516
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