Re: screen readers and punctuation

Thanks for sharing. It’s good to know what is recommended for basic coverage. 

But I wonder how codes for isolated Greek letters or symbols used in phonetics or Old English would be handled. 

http://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/languages/ancient/greek/greekchart/

http://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/languages/ancient/oenglish/


As students advance in higher education, more of these scenarios beyond math do occur.  And again although MathML is crucial for rendering fractions and more complex mathematical notation, I believe using MathML just to recite one symbol is overkill in terms of developer effort and code bloat. 

On the other hand, I realize some of these are complex issues to resolve.

Elizabeth

FYI - If anyone needed examples of how many technical symbol codes are in Unicode, you can see 
http://www.unicode.org/charts/#symbols


Not all of them are used in English, but a lot are.

> On Feb 14, 2019, at 9:06 AM, Karlen Communications <info@karlencommunications.com> wrote:
> 
> If you use Unicode characters, the reliability of readability/pronunciation increases. Take a look at this resource:
> https://www.pubcom.com/books/bevi_dingbats/dingbats_chart.shtml

>  
> For a “cheat sheet” of Unicode characters and how the JAWS and NVDA screen readers interpret them.
>  
> Cheers, Karen
>  
>  
>  
>  
> From: Kalpeshkumar Jain <kalpeshjain89@gmail.com> 
> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2019 2:14 AM
> To: Sean Murphy (seanmmur) <seanmmur@cisco.com>
> Cc: Michellanne Li <michellanne.li@gmail.com>; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: Re: screen readers and punctuation
>  
> I have had a similar experience with different SR and punctuations/symbols reading behavior in one of the projects I worked on recently.
> It was bit frustrating that SR was ignoring simple symbols like '+, -, *, /, <, etc.'
> Using MathML for simple expressions was not feasible in my situation.
>  
> Instead of using the symbols as is, we used their respective HTML character codes.We referred below link to get the entities:
> https://www..rapidtables.com/web/html/html-codes.html

>  
> The result was an improvement in the reading behavior. SR were identifying the symbols.
> However it was still not 100% coverage.
>  
> Ultimately, we had to add a disclaimer stating SR might skip some symbols
> We had to leave the choice of enabling the setting to read all punctuations in SR tools to the User as that cannot be done programmatically.
>  
>  
> Thanks,
> Kalpeshkumar Jain
>  
>  
> On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 4:53 AM Sean Murphy (seanmmur) <seanmmur@cisco.com> wrote:
>> The versions of screen readers here being used are very old. Also the punctuation is very dependent on context. As if you are using a math or programming. The <= will mean something different than if it is used for identifying how the flow of processes goes. Such as 1 <= 3 is a maths equation. But if I say process1 <= process2 providing context of order of process means something else. I  wouldn’t want the 2nd example to say less than or equal too. Also it is a lot less content to comprehend hearing <= than the full words. A screen reader user gets used to how things are spoken. The brain is an amazing program or computer within itself.
>>  
>>  
>> I have not tested this myself. But if a page was using Math-l would the screen reader use the < = or the full words?
>>  
>> <image001.png>
>> Sean Murphy
>> SR ENGINEER.SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
>> seanmmur@cisco.com
>> Tel: +61 2 8446 7751
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> Cisco Systems, Inc.
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>> Australia
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>>  
>> From: Michellanne Li <michellanne.li@gmail.com> 
>> Sent: Thursday, 14 February 2019 2:40 AM
>> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
>> Subject: screen readers and punctuation
>>  
>> Hello all,
>>  
>> I just read this piece from Deque on how screen readers address punctuation: Why Don’t Screen Readers Always Read What’s on the Screen? Part 1: Punctuation and Typographic Symbols. 
>>  
>> Since it was written in 2014, I am wondering if screen reader technology has since been updated to better read out important symbols.
>>  
>> Thanks!
>>  
>> Michellanne Li
>> (512) 718-2207
>> http://www.michellanne.com


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D.
Accessibility IT Consultant
Teaching and Learning with Technology
Penn State University
ejp10@psu.edu, (814) 865-0805 or (814) 865-2030 (Main Office)

The 300 Building, 112
304 West College Avenue
State College, PA 16801
accessibility.psu.edu

Received on Thursday, 14 February 2019 16:30:22 UTC