Re: Braille readers read Arial font characters incorrectly

Hi Harry,

It may be worth asking the user to confirm if it is indeed the Arial font being used to render the character. It is become increasingly common for web sites to incorporate “icon fonts” like FontAwesome (http://fontawesome.io/ <http://fontawesome.io/>) that might be rendered incorrectly when represented as braille. Ideally, these icon fonts would be hidden from screen readers with aria-hidden.  Obviously, there would be an accessible equivalent for the icon as well.

Best,

Mark
> On Sep 5, 2017, at 2:56 PM, Harry Loots <harry.loots@ieee.org> wrote:
> 
> Thanks Richard
> Again,  you confirm my suspicion that the person who mentioned it in the focus group I was running,  had gained a misunderstanding from somewhere. I could not see that font would influence output but thought I'd ask. Your suggestion that Braille reader software may be corrupt makes sense.
> Regards,  Harry
> 
> 
> On 5 Sep 2017 20:30, "Userite" <richard@userite.com <mailto:richard@userite.com>> wrote:
> Hi Harry,
> 
> So far as I am aware all braille readers interpret the underlying HTML text (ASCII code) and therefore don’t care what font you use.  This is the same for screen readers.  So if your braille reader is miss-reading some characters on a page the problem is probably due to a faulty character setting for the relevant page.
> 
> You should check in the <head> section  to make sure that you have it correct, it should say something like <meta charset=”utf-8”>
> 
> If the character setting is correct then you probably have a problem with the braille reader software and need to check if it is corrupted. Also check that you have the latest version.  If necessary reinstall the software.
> 
> The problem should be nothing to do with CSS unless you use a style sheet with the media type braille specified, in which case delete it as it is now a deprecated media type.
> 
> Regards
> Richard
> 
> Richard Warren
> Technical Manager
> www.website-accessibilty.com <http://www.website-accessibilty.com/>
> 
> 
> From: Harry Loots <mailto:harry.loots@ieee.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2017 11:48 AM
> To: w3c <mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Subject: Braille readers read Arial font characters incorrectly
> 
> Dear all
> 
> In a meeting with a focus group a few days ago (i'm currently managing a re-design of an intranet for a UN agency in Rome) a user suggested that certain characters in the Arial font are misread by Braille readers. (He specifically mentioned "i"  which he said is displayed as three strokes or something...)
> 
> I have not heard about this before, and don't seem to be able to find information about this on the web either.
> 
> So, does any one have experience of Braille readers reading fonts incorrectly? If we are aware of such anomalies one may be able to circumvent it using CSS to provide alternative fonts to ensure the information is received correctly.
> 
> Many thanks
> Harry
>

Received on Tuesday, 5 September 2017 19:50:24 UTC