- From: Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net>
- Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 21:07:00 -0500
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
At 07:06 PM 2002-03-27 , Steven.Faulkner@visionaustralia.org.au wrote: >I have noticed that when using a screen reading browser such as IBM >homepage reader when words are joined together for example "homepage" >the words "home" and "page" are not recognised, as a consequence the joined >words become incomprehensible to the screenreading software. I haven't >found any references to this within the gudielines. have i missed them? > No, it's not obvious at all. Yes, when in doubt, hypenate compounds if you have any doubt as to how long they have been in the language. Some screen readers will successfully divide camelCase agglutinations. I don't know how widespread this is, though. You would have to have the memory of an elephant to pull up the following flames. But they do touch on text-to-speech, along with lay persons, people operating in a second language, and others with reading difficulty as at risk on account of unusual words including neologisms: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-er-ig/2000Dec/0079.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2001JulSep/0542.html The point is to have and apply a reasonably small word list and handle those things that fall outside this list as special. My spell-checker in Eudora 4 bounces 'homepage' and suggests "home page" as a possible correction. Need we say more? It could be as simple as <acronym title="home page">homepage</acronym> although purists will yell at me. Al Al
Received on Wednesday, 27 March 2002 21:07:04 UTC