- From: Phill Jenkins <pjenkins@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 12:33:50 -0500
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
The better question to ask is <quote> What causes a screen reader to stop? <end quote> Yes, a period in the punctuation will always cause all synthesizers (as far as I know) to stop or pause longer than a comma. But some screen readers can also be configured to stop or pause at other times: end of a heading? end of a list item? end of meta information? For example, a user can configure Home Page Reader to "add trailing text - such as a period" after headings, list items, meta text, etc. So now every list item will "full stop" at the end because the synthesizer will stop when it encounters a period. I would recommend against an author adding the period since it isn't recommend in most modern grammar books. Interestingly, if the author adds a period, and the user configures the synthesizer to stop at each list item, the second period encountered may be spoken as a "dot". list item with two periods.. In my opinion, authors should NOT be making accommodations that are clearly in the realm of responsibility of the synthesizer and screen readers. Regards, Phill Jenkins IBM Research Division - Accessibility Center 11501 Burnet Rd, Austin TX 78758 http://www.ibm.com/able
Received on Monday, 13 August 2001 13:34:40 UTC