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Re: [html4all] HTML5 Alternative Text, and Authoring Tools

From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 23:48:07 +0300
Cc: "Matt Morgan-May" <mattmay@adobe.com>, "HTML Working Group" <public-html@w3.org>, "W3C WAI-XTECH" <wai-xtech@w3.org>
Message-Id: <A19216CA-1F75-48A1-9D47-DB0DF4CEBE6F@iki.fi>
To: "Gez Lemon" <gez.lemon@gmail.com>

On May 14, 2008, at 23:33, Gez Lemon wrote:

>> I would hope detecting what strings take very long to speak or that  
>> don't
>> appear to contain words from a dictionary is something that AT  
>> vendors
>> wouldn't need external advice on.
>
> That isn't how screen readers work. Screen readers work by converting
> text into phonemes that they can then synthesise and output to the
> user. This approach is obviously a lot quicker and more flexible than
> containing a static list of dictionary entries.


Whether the speech synthesis is dictionary based is not the point. The  
point is, can a screen reader reasonable have *a* dictionary for its  
speech language. In many cases, the platform provides spell checking,  
so a screen reader could test if a string spell checks successfully to  
make a guess if speaking it will be any good.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Received on Wednesday, 14 May 2008 20:48:50 UTC

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