3 ms·

> The details are a bit sketchy. Ask "how many thousands," and you're told, ¯_(ツ)_/¯. Off-topic: I was surprised to see that journalists are doing Unicode art

> The details are a bit sketchy. Ask "how many thousands," and you're told, ¯_(ツ)_/¯. Off-topic: I was surprised to see that journalists are doing Unicode art in articles now, and I don’t think that’s wise. Wouldn’t this confuse a blind reader who is listening to a transcribed version?

pault 9y ago
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- buro9 9y ago
  Their article format is Markdown, and if you enter the full shrug as Markdown then the back slash escapes the underscore to prevent it becoming markup, but it is removed in the process. Markdown is not friendly to the shrug.
  - pault 9y ago
    I was trying to make a joke about the journalist not caring about screen readers. Also, the correct way to shrug in markdown is ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ (verified in github and gitlab).
detaro 9y ago
Yes it would (if not correctly marked up), but caring about that isn't exactly widespread in the web world in general.
criddell 9y ago
I think when you include the context of the article around that sentence, the meaning should be clear.
- alistairSH 9y ago
  Looks at the source, in this instance, the emoji is not accessible. It's text in the paragraph, just like the actually words. The author is relying on tools like Jaws/NVDA correctly translating a graphic into spoken word. There are ways to add emojis in an accessible fashion. You'd have to treat them like images and add alt text or some aria attributes to ensure the screen-reader interprets it correctly. Or, use predefined Unicode verisons. Neither was done here and Wired should be ashamed of themselves for not even making an effort.
maxerickson 9y ago
I think it is reasonable to expect a transcription service or screen reader to treat "¯_(ツ)_/¯" like it treats any other word. Emojis have been around long enough that they ought to be handling them by now anyway.
- croon 9y ago
  > I think it is reasonable to expect a transcription service or screen reader to treat "¯_(ツ)_/¯" like it treats any other word. For a seeing person, there is negligible difference between "¯_(ツ)_/¯" and "¯\_(ツ)_/¯". For either a seeing or blind person there is negligible difference between "emoji" and "meoji". We can all make up emojis on the spot that can only heuristically be decrypted by seeing them as an image, not reading them one character at a time. Making up a new word is still just a sequence of characters, and can be understood by any medium, whether it's written, braille, audio, etc. There's no reasonable way to transcript emojis other than a predefined database of them, which unicode already has.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Yes, my point is that a transcription service or screen reader will be well served by having a database containing symbol sequences like "¯\_(ツ)_/¯". And transcription services should certainly recognize "¯_(ツ)_/¯" as a failed attempt at "¯\_(ツ)_/¯". Screen readers probably should too. If they are sticking to whatever Unicode blesses they aren't serving their users well. Also, I read provost as talking about the art in general, including a correct shrug, so I replied in that context instead of spending time on the missing \.
  - wahnfrieden 9y ago
    Unicode language prescriptivism... that’s a new one.
    - croon 9y ago
      That's not what I was suggesting. I was suggesting that the proposed solution would be nothing more than doing the same thing again, but as a transcription service. Unicode updates with new emojis too. Being more adaptive than that requires offloading the responsibility of readability to the writers. If I write a blog post featuring a unique ascii emoji I made up, I can't expect a third party to handle that for blind patrons, regardless if it's a transcription service or unicode.
geofft 9y ago
Wouldn't the same thing happen with ":-)", which is likely to appear (and be relevant) in quotations if nothing else? I'd expect a screen reader to handle ":-)", and given that Slack has had /shrug for years, I am curious if screen readers also know how to pronounce the shrug yet. (Is Slack screen-reader-accessible?)
JackC 9y ago
It's fun to try stuff like this. In iOS for example you can go to Settings - General - Accessibility - VoiceOver to try the screen reader experience. For the shruggie I get "macron backslash underscore japanese in a different voice slash macron," which sucks. Too bad - I was hoping it would be recognized as a word.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  The Japanese pronunciation is ‘tsu’, it’s from the katakana alphabet.
fiatjaf 9y ago
There should be an "alt" attribute that specifies to the transcriber what the face means. Nevertheless, I'm very satisfied that they're using emoticons and not emoji.
- pault 9y ago
  I think that's what aria-label[1] does. Also, I believe the correct term of art is "kamoji"[2]. Emoticons are faces constructed from ascii characters. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/ARIA_Techniques/Using_the_aria-label_attribute https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... [2] http://kaomoji.ru/en/ http://kaomoji.ru/en/
  - wccrawford 9y ago
    Spelling correction: Kaomoji, not "kamoji". "Kao" is the japanese word for "face" and "moji" is "character". That said, I don't think there's a "correct term" yet for these things. That's just what some people call them.
garblegarble 9y ago
I was impressed to discover that on macOS, asking it to speak '¯\_(ツ)_/¯' results in it saying "shrug". The exact form from the article without the backslash for the left arm, though, results in it saying "comma" for some (very) strange reason. For example: say '¯_(ツ)_/¯' say '¯\_(ツ)_/¯'
- virgilp 9y ago
  Nope - neither of them say "shrug" on my laptop. High Sierra/ 10.13.2 [edit] And it "says" them exactly the same, regardless of backslash: "macron, (unintelligible)letter two underscore slash, macron". What is says is actually this: ¯ツ_/¯
  - garblegarble 9y ago
    Strange, I'm on 10.13.3... have you tried running the say commands at the command-line? My speech settings are set to "Allison", so perhaps it's a feature of the advanced voices?
    - virgilp 9y ago
      > have you tried running the say commands at the command-line I don't know how else to run it :) But you guessed it. I have 4 voices, Samantha/Victoria/Alex/Fred. I was using Alex. Samantha behaves as you say, all others behave as I say. (Strangely enough, now it says "Samantha (downloading)", so maybe after download it will be 'fixed'?)
- steve_adams_86 9y ago
  Is this a joke? I just ran it and got something like "macron colo-con letter to underscore macron" And that's... The best I can interpret, it's very muddled. edit: Ah, I see your response to someone else. I'm going to try Allison. edit: Ha! It is Allison! "Shrug". What a time to be alive!

pault 9y ago

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

buro9 9y ago
Their article format is Markdown, and if you enter the full shrug as Markdown then the back slash escapes the underscore to prevent it becoming markup, but it is removed in the process. Markdown is not friendly to the shrug.
- pault 9y ago
  I was trying to make a joke about the journalist not caring about screen readers. Also, the correct way to shrug in markdown is ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ (verified in github and gitlab).

detaro 9y ago

Yes it would (if not correctly marked up), but caring about that isn't exactly widespread in the web world in general.

criddell 9y ago

I think when you include the context of the article around that sentence, the meaning should be clear.

alistairSH 9y ago
Looks at the source, in this instance, the emoji is not accessible. It's text in the paragraph, just like the actually words. The author is relying on tools like Jaws/NVDA correctly translating a graphic into spoken word. There are ways to add emojis in an accessible fashion. You'd have to treat them like images and add alt text or some aria attributes to ensure the screen-reader interprets it correctly. Or, use predefined Unicode verisons. Neither was done here and Wired should be ashamed of themselves for not even making an effort.

maxerickson 9y ago

I think it is reasonable to expect a transcription service or screen reader to treat "¯_(ツ)_/¯" like it treats any other word. Emojis have been around long enough that they ought to be handling them by now anyway.

croon 9y ago
> I think it is reasonable to expect a transcription service or screen reader to treat "¯_(ツ)_/¯" like it treats any other word. For a seeing person, there is negligible difference between "¯_(ツ)_/¯" and "¯\_(ツ)_/¯". For either a seeing or blind person there is negligible difference between "emoji" and "meoji". We can all make up emojis on the spot that can only heuristically be decrypted by seeing them as an image, not reading them one character at a time. Making up a new word is still just a sequence of characters, and can be understood by any medium, whether it's written, braille, audio, etc. There's no reasonable way to transcript emojis other than a predefined database of them, which unicode already has.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Yes, my point is that a transcription service or screen reader will be well served by having a database containing symbol sequences like "¯\_(ツ)_/¯". And transcription services should certainly recognize "¯_(ツ)_/¯" as a failed attempt at "¯\_(ツ)_/¯". Screen readers probably should too. If they are sticking to whatever Unicode blesses they aren't serving their users well. Also, I read provost as talking about the art in general, including a correct shrug, so I replied in that context instead of spending time on the missing \.
- wahnfrieden 9y ago
  Unicode language prescriptivism... that’s a new one.
  - croon 9y ago
    That's not what I was suggesting. I was suggesting that the proposed solution would be nothing more than doing the same thing again, but as a transcription service. Unicode updates with new emojis too. Being more adaptive than that requires offloading the responsibility of readability to the writers. If I write a blog post featuring a unique ascii emoji I made up, I can't expect a third party to handle that for blind patrons, regardless if it's a transcription service or unicode.

geofft 9y ago

Wouldn't the same thing happen with ":-)", which is likely to appear (and be relevant) in quotations if nothing else? I'd expect a screen reader to handle ":-)", and given that Slack has had /shrug for years, I am curious if screen readers also know how to pronounce the shrug yet. (Is Slack screen-reader-accessible?)

JackC 9y ago

It's fun to try stuff like this. In iOS for example you can go to Settings - General - Accessibility - VoiceOver to try the screen reader experience. For the shruggie I get "macron backslash underscore japanese in a different voice slash macron," which sucks. Too bad - I was hoping it would be recognized as a word.

robin_reala 9y ago
The Japanese pronunciation is ‘tsu’, it’s from the katakana alphabet.

fiatjaf 9y ago

There should be an "alt" attribute that specifies to the transcriber what the face means. Nevertheless, I'm very satisfied that they're using emoticons and not emoji.

pault 9y ago
I think that's what aria-label[1] does. Also, I believe the correct term of art is "kamoji"[2]. Emoticons are faces constructed from ascii characters. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/ARIA_Techniques/Using_the_aria-label_attribute https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... [2] http://kaomoji.ru/en/ http://kaomoji.ru/en/
- wccrawford 9y ago
  Spelling correction: Kaomoji, not "kamoji". "Kao" is the japanese word for "face" and "moji" is "character". That said, I don't think there's a "correct term" yet for these things. That's just what some people call them.

garblegarble 9y ago

I was impressed to discover that on macOS, asking it to speak '¯\_(ツ)_/¯' results in it saying "shrug". The exact form from the article without the backslash for the left arm, though, results in it saying "comma" for some (very) strange reason. For example: say '¯_(ツ)_/¯' say '¯\_(ツ)_/¯'

virgilp 9y ago
Nope - neither of them say "shrug" on my laptop. High Sierra/ 10.13.2 [edit] And it "says" them exactly the same, regardless of backslash: "macron, (unintelligible)letter two underscore slash, macron". What is says is actually this: ¯ツ_/¯
- garblegarble 9y ago
  Strange, I'm on 10.13.3... have you tried running the say commands at the command-line? My speech settings are set to "Allison", so perhaps it's a feature of the advanced voices?
  - virgilp 9y ago
    > have you tried running the say commands at the command-line I don't know how else to run it :) But you guessed it. I have 4 voices, Samantha/Victoria/Alex/Fred. I was using Alex. Samantha behaves as you say, all others behave as I say. (Strangely enough, now it says "Samantha (downloading)", so maybe after download it will be 'fixed'?)
steve_adams_86 9y ago
Is this a joke? I just ran it and got something like "macron colo-con letter to underscore macron" And that's... The best I can interpret, it's very muddled. edit: Ah, I see your response to someone else. I'm going to try Allison. edit: Ha! It is Allison! "Shrug". What a time to be alive!