Re: [techs] pronunciation of emoticons and symbols

aloha, wendy!

WC1: In the update for jaws that Roberto sent [1], it says, "You can even 
use the Dictionary Manager to replace words with sounds or play a sound, as 
well as change the pronunciation of a word. You can also tell JAWS to 
always speak a particular word in a particular language. Imagine replacing 
a left pointing arrow symbol with a sound which plays from the right ear to 
the left. All this power is available just by selecting the appropriate 
speech and sounds scheme or by using the more powerful and flexible 
Dictionary Manager."

WC2: in this morning's call [2] we said we would define ascii art as 
multi-line ascii art, but dash dash greater than is not an emoticon and it 
is not multi-line ascii art but it is a symbolic representation created out 
of characters.

WC3: so, 2 points
:1. is the definition that we agreed on this morning accurate?
  2. jaws users are (or will be) able to add common "symbols" to their 
pronunciation dictionary which answers a question we asked in the call.

GJR: a few considerations:

1. cannot ascii art be enclosed in <abbr title="smiley">:)</abbr> -- this 
would, of course, necessitate that AT developers make expansion of ABBR and 
ACRONYM available to users, something whose continued non-existence is a 
cause of much trouble, dismay, despair, and frustration for those of us who 
have set unambiguous dictionary exceptions in our AT, but who, when a 
specific use of a homonymic abbreviation or acronym is used, would prefer 
if the AT scanned the DOM (or scraped the doc source) for expansions and 
made them available to the user (that is, override pre-set dictionary 
entries) if that is what the user of the AT wants slash needs slash demands

2. the onus should be on the page author to provide a machine-readable 
alternative -- foisting responsibility onto individual users does not and 
should not suffice -- the author MUST be made to make all possible 
ambiguities unambiguous, and it is the authoring tool or evaluation & 
repair tool that should encourage authors to do so, whenever one can be 
recognized

3. many (i'd dare say the majority) of speech-output users have "speak 
punctuation" either turned off or set at the lowest possible level, so that 
the flow of whatever he or she is reading isn't interrupted, but indicated 
in other ways, either through pauses, beeps, audible/tactile symbols, etc., 
so a lot of ascii art can fall into an individual user's perceptual black 
hole -- which is why dash-dash-greater than MUST be annotated using some 
sort of glossing mechanism (hence my suggestion that ABBR be used, for the 
ascii art is being used as visual shorthand (which, in my once 
highly-visual mind equals an abbreviation, albeit a semiotic, rather than 
semantic, abbreviation) -- the dash-dash-greater-than exists for a reason 
-- to direct a user's attention to a specific phrase, piece of content, or 
link, and therefore, under the rubric of equality of access to all content, 
it MUST be annotated, NO exceptions...

think of it this way -- if an emoticon adds a crucial element to the 
understanding of a page and one has punctuation turned off or hasn't yet 
encountered this combination of punctuation and special characters will it 
make any noise?  of course not, but at least with the use of ABBR, in 
conjunction with "title", it stands a falling tree's chance...

so, i most vigorously object to using the term quote multi-line unquote or 
incorporating the concept of multiple lines into the definition of ASCII 
art -- an emoticon or arrow composed of punctuation is as much ASCII art as 
is the infamous ink-wasting picture of bob dobbs comprised completely of 
at-signs that circulated widely during the early days of the 'net (check 
out any of the church of the sub-genius sites, such as
http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/d/r/dryfoo/www/SubG/subg.html,
or http://www.subgenius.com/
if you aren't familiar with bob's pipe-clenching smile or the entire 
sub-genius concept)

just, my 2 cents:-- actually, probably over a dollar in aggregate, since 
i've been crying in the wilderness on this point for years, although 
lately, given my computer & health problems, mostly to myself,
gregory.

PS: yes, i do enclose ampersands in the ABBR element, as follows:

<abbr title="and">&amp;</abbr>

PPS: don't expect me to keep up with this thread -- wendy's post popped up 
as a result of an event queue gone mad, but i'm glad it arbitrarily picked 
this topic, as it is one on which i have rather strong opinions...

PPPS: using a specific screen-reader as a baseline is NOT (bold and 
emphasize that, jeeves) a good idea, let alone an accessibility threshold
--------------------------------------------------------
He that lives on Hope, dies farting
      -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
--------------------------------------------------------
Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
    WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
         <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
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Received on Tuesday, 26 August 2003 15:07:11 UTC