Re: Best practices for screen readers

Hi Roel,

Welcome to the list.

> You can mark up a phone number (indeed, a whole address) using semantic 
> hCard microformat markup:
> 
>         <http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard>
> 
> (Microformats are a way of adding simple markup to human-readable data 
> items such as events, contact details or locations, on web pages, so that 
> the information in them can be extracted by software and indexed, searched 
> for, saved, cross-referenced or combined. More technically, they are items 
> of semantic markup, using just standard (X)HTML with a set of common 
> class-names. They are open and available, freely, for anyone to use.)

Maybe you can, as you suggest, use these microformats in this way
but be careful as that doesn't mean that you should. Many user agents
don't even fully
support HTML never mind the new kid on the block. I would be concerned
that that is
just bad advice.

Its interesting to me that the advent of these microformats is an
indication of future possibilities
but I guess that its application, especially relating to disability, is
very limited.

> Hopefully, in time, the authors of screen readers and similar software 
> will include recognition of that standard.

You may have a very long beard by the time that happens. Mine will be
longer.

> There is also a style for aural stylesheets, something like "spell-out", 
> but that's not widely supported.

Exactly.

Josh



Andy Mabbett wrote:
> "Roel Van Gils" <roelvangils@gmail.com> wrote on 06/10/2006 16:54:45:
> 
>> Hi Bianca,
> 
>> I'm a newbie on this list myself ;)
> 
> Me too. We should start a club! ;-)
> 
>>> 2. Is there a way to make the screen reader know that a number is a
>>> phone number or street address so it reads 2-9-1-6 instead of 2,916?
> 
>> I'm not aware of any reliable way to achieve this without adding extra
>> (unsemantic) tags. This will probably work, but it's not so pretty.
> 
> You can mark up a phone number (indeed, a whole address) using semantic 
> hCard microformat markup:
> 
>         <http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard>
> 
> (Microformats are a way of adding simple markup to human-readable data 
> items such as events, contact details or locations, on web pages, so that 
> the information in them can be extracted by software and indexed, searched 
> for, saved, cross-referenced or combined. More technically, they are items 
> of semantic markup, using just standard (X)HTML with a set of common 
> class-names. They are open and available, freely, for anyone to use.)
> 
> Hopefully, in time, the authors of screen readers and similar software 
> will include recognition of that standard.
> 
> There is also a style for aural stylesheets, something like "spell-out", 
> but that's not widely supported. I have a reference at home, and will dig 
> it out for next week.
> 


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Received on Friday, 6 October 2006 18:12:36 UTC