RE: double underscore with meaning

This sounds similar to strikethrough which screen readers do not announce correctly either.

I’ve suggested some additional aria labeling. In the cases I’ve seen strikethrough it has been on product sites and I’ve had them add the text “old price” since that is what the strikethrough through a price value was communicating to visual users.


Alan Smith

From: Jim Allan
Sent: Thursday, September 6, 2018 1:35 PM
To: Patrick H. Lauke
Cc: WAI-IG
Subject: Re: double underscore with meaning



On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 12:23 PM Patrick H. Lauke <redux@splintered.co.uk> wrote:
On 06/09/2018 18:05, Felix Miata wrote:

> Semantically, an appropriate character instead of CSS:
> 
> https://unicode-search.net/unicode-namesearch.pl?term=UNDERSCORE
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underscore

Is that announced/exposed by assistive technologies in any way?
just tested with JAWS, NVDS and the html entity &#8215; - 
jaws says  "equals"
 
nvda says nothing

entity reading by screen readers is spotty and varies by screen reader.




> 
>> The fact that the row header already says "Total ..." is arguably
>> sufficient I'd say.
> 
> Nope. This convention is well over a century old, the source of the term "bottom
> line". Those who skim balance sheets, income and cash flow statements for the
> bottom line focus on the number column.
> 
> If it wasn't for accountants, personal computers would have taken many years
> longer, or may never have, become the ubiquitous tools that they did. The double
> underscore isn't going away.

Did anybody here say "don't provide a visual double underscore"? No. The 
question was about how to convey this not just visually.

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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-- 
Jim Allan, Accessibility Coordinator
Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
1100 W. 45th St., Austin, Texas 78756
voice 512.206.9315    fax: 512.206.9452 http://www.tsbvi.edu/
"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." McLuhan, 1964