RE: Screen readers and full stops + seperating links!

Hi Phill,

I've tried out customising Home page reader, to add a trailing period 
to headings. It reads out the heading then "dot" which isn't ideal.

I agree with your general statement that we should be leaving it up 
to users to alter their screen reader settings, rather than maul our 
HTML.

But has anyone asked before - why are we meant to make sure there is 
a non-linked character between adjacent links? I can easily change 
the settings on HPR so that this would not be needed - I've set it so 
that a "ping" sounds before each link is read out, thus seperating 
adjacent links. It seems like a double standard to me. What do others 
think?

Cheers



>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 Thursday, 4 October 2001 00:42:53 UTC