RE: Are All Capital Letters accessible?

David,

I would like to know which screen readers handle upper case so poorly. AS I have never seen this. I have received emails and other content in full upper case from a screen reader user when they didn’t relies they had capslock on. The screen reader being used at the time didn’t spell out the text.

The issue you have outlined could be related to older TTS engines which were being used with the screen reader. This is the only cause I can think of.

Why is it an accessibility issue if only the heading is in all Caps. Putting screen readers aside for a moment. Is it difficult for low vision people to read? Does it affect people with learning disabilities?

Sean Murphy
Accessibility Software engineer
seanmmur@cisco.com
Tel: +61 2 8446 7751       Cisco Systems, Inc.
The Forum 201 Pacific Highway
ST LEONARDS
2065
Australia
cisco.com
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From: David Ashleydale [mailto:dashleydale@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 9 May 2017 7:34 AM
To: Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net>; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Are All Capital Letters accessible?

Another thing to be careful of with using all caps is that it's sometimes used for emphasis. And that usually doesn't come across for screen reader users. In fact, I've seen some screen reading software read out the letters one by one when they are all capitalized because it thinks it must be an acronym. And that would be super annoying to screen reader users.

On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 2:23 PM Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net<mailto:mrmazda@earthlink.net>> wrote:
Léonie Watson composed on 2017-05-08 16:15 (UTC+0100):

> I'd also note that all caps is generally thought of as bad manners (it's
> the equivalent of shouting at someone)...

Not "generally", but in the context of plain text email, which had its genesis
several decades ago, and where bold, italic and larger type size are not
available for emphasis where appropriate.
--
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

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