7 ms·

Not sure if HN approves (it removes emojies at least, this went fine it seems), but there are glyphs that look like the alphabet/normal letters, but are not rea

Not sure if HN approves (it removes emojies at least, this went fine it seems), but there are glyphs that look like the alphabet/normal letters, but are not really the same characters, like these: 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔, 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘, ⓣⓗⓘⓢ, 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤, ㄒ卄丨丂, ｲんﾉ丂, ꙅiʜƚ, 🅃🄷🄸🅂, sıɥʇ, 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 My guess is screen readers can have trouble telling what it really says.

onion2k 6y ago
My guess is screen readers can have trouble telling what it really says. It's actually the humans who don't know what it really says. We see 'some weird looking glyphs' and mentally translate them to letters we know. This quirk of the human brain is how we can read a random jumble of letters from different alphabets as English words. Screenreaders on the other hand know exactly what it says and they read it out precisely how it's written.
- hyperdimension 6y ago
  I agree, and I can only imagine how aggravating it must be to be a user with a screen reader having to (mentally/programmatically) parse the very "clever" strike-through-simulating special-purpose Unicode text some user decided would suffice for "real" strike-through text, just because HN is, uh, persnickety, with its allowed characters... I've seen it many times here at least. Just add an addendum!
- account42 6y ago
  What it "says" is whatever the person that wrote it intended to convey.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    That's obviously not true. Communication is a two-way relationship. You literally can't be an effective communicator on your own. If you write something in a way that can't be understood (with a little effort) by the reader then you failed to communicate well. If the reader is using a screenreader and you wrote in silly characters then you failed to communicate effectively, and you didn't convey anything at all regardless of what you might have meant.
kalleboo 6y ago
Someone posted a video on Twitter about this. What happens is that it reads out the meaning (similar to the unicode names) of the symbols. E.g. 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 get read as "Mathematical bold fraktur small t, mathematical bold fraktur small h, mathematical bold fraktur small I, mathematical bold fraktur small s"
- tikwidd 6y ago
  I wonder if a screen reader could be smart enough to use OCR when it comes across an abrupt sequence of unusual character combinations like this.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    I don't think you'd need to use OCR for that. Just* use transliteration tables to map those characters to the base characters. (* I usually hate when 'just' is used this way, I'm sure it's a minefield in some respects. But still more robust than trying to optically interperet what amounts to captchas in some situations :)
    - _-___________-_ 6y ago
      There are quite a few libraries for converting arbitrary Unicode to some subset while preserving as much meaning as possible (presumably by embedding such tables), and they generally work pretty well on this kind of text.
      - function_seven 6y ago
        Yeah, I've used iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $text) in my work to make sure I could accept arbitrary Unicode from users, and also send that same info as ASCII to legacy systems that mangled UTF. It worked really well. When I wrote the parent comment, I tried it real quick with a REPL on my own machine, but apparently I don't have the right combination of environment variables or locales or God knows what. Didn't feel like chasing that rabbit into his hole.
- 6y ago
Ndymium 6y ago
This can be seen quite a bit on Twitter, both in usernames and the tweets themselves. Personally, since I think human behaviour cannot be completely fixed but can be nudged in the correct direction, I'd like to see services implement something like alt text for text, especially usernames. This way people can use different characters to be as creative as they want, but provide an accessible version for screen readers. Something like this example: 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕖𝕩𝕒𝕞𝕡𝕝𝕖 The alternative would be restricting the use of these characters, but this would kill many valid use cases and you can't just forbid non-latin characters on an international service. I've written a post[1] about this and thought I'd implement it in one of my services as an example. I haven't seen any example of it live yet. [1] https://blog.nytsoi.net/2019/12/12/alt-text-for-text https://blog.nytsoi.net/2019/12/12/alt-text-for-text
- marksomnian 6y ago
 I like the idea, but the de-Unicodifier would have to use the current user's locale - de-Unicodifying certain characters (e.g. Cyrillic that look like English) would have unintended consequences if you just assumed they're meant to be English.
 - djxfade 6y ago
 That wouldn't work either. What if I was born with a foreign name, but was raised in a totally different country?
 - Ndymium 6y ago
 My idea was that this would be something provided manually by the users, just like you can specify alt text for images on Twitter right now. I know many wouldn't bother. But at least some would, and it would make using an upside down nickname possible for me again. :)
 - srtjstjsj 6y ago
 The hosting service can solve this million times as effectively as the users can.
cpeterso 6y ago
Here is a video demonstrating how a screen reader reads these pseudo-fonts: https://twitter.com/jypnati0n_/status/1303012163766743041 https://twitter.com/jypnati0n_/status/1303012163766743041 Seems like the screen reader could have a "say what they mean" mode to pronounce "𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔" as "this". I assume the legitimate use of Unicode mathematical symbols like "𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔" is much less than the pseudo-font usage.
function_seven 6y ago
I once used Unicode to set off some fixed width text inline with my comment. (Or, I think it was italicized? Don't remember exactly). I was doing it to work around the limited formatting available here, but I noticed a couple hours later that my comment was transliterated into ASCII. Given the time delay, I assume it was done manually. (Dang, was that you?)
nullsense 6y ago
🅃🄷🄸🅂 🄸🅂 🅂parta!!!
dheera 6y ago
It would seem to me that this would be a simple problem to solve for screenreaders as they are just 1:1 mappings, and in many cases even consecutive blocks of Unicode characters. Understandably though, screenreader software probably isn't as fast moving as other industries. If there was an open source screen reader I think I could easily make a pull request to solve this particular problem, if it is a problem.
- ctoth 6y ago
  It is a problem, and: https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda
  - anitil 6y ago
    They were hiring on a "Who's Hiring" thread recently as well
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
srtjstjsj 6y ago
> the alphabet/normal letters, ASCII English "Latin" letters. Not "the" alphabet or "normal" letters.

onion2k 6y ago

My guess is screen readers can have trouble telling what it really says. It's actually the humans who don't know what it really says. We see 'some weird looking glyphs' and mentally translate them to letters we know. This quirk of the human brain is how we can read a random jumble of letters from different alphabets as English words. Screenreaders on the other hand know exactly what it says and they read it out precisely how it's written.

hyperdimension 6y ago
I agree, and I can only imagine how aggravating it must be to be a user with a screen reader having to (mentally/programmatically) parse the very "clever" strike-through-simulating special-purpose Unicode text some user decided would suffice for "real" strike-through text, just because HN is, uh, persnickety, with its allowed characters... I've seen it many times here at least. Just add an addendum!
account42 6y ago
What it "says" is whatever the person that wrote it intended to convey.
- onion2k 6y ago
  That's obviously not true. Communication is a two-way relationship. You literally can't be an effective communicator on your own. If you write something in a way that can't be understood (with a little effort) by the reader then you failed to communicate well. If the reader is using a screenreader and you wrote in silly characters then you failed to communicate effectively, and you didn't convey anything at all regardless of what you might have meant.

kalleboo 6y ago

Someone posted a video on Twitter about this. What happens is that it reads out the meaning (similar to the unicode names) of the symbols. E.g. 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 get read as "Mathematical bold fraktur small t, mathematical bold fraktur small h, mathematical bold fraktur small I, mathematical bold fraktur small s"

tikwidd 6y ago
I wonder if a screen reader could be smart enough to use OCR when it comes across an abrupt sequence of unusual character combinations like this.
- function_seven 6y ago
  I don't think you'd need to use OCR for that. Just* use transliteration tables to map those characters to the base characters. (* I usually hate when 'just' is used this way, I'm sure it's a minefield in some respects. But still more robust than trying to optically interperet what amounts to captchas in some situations :)
  - _-___________-_ 6y ago
    There are quite a few libraries for converting arbitrary Unicode to some subset while preserving as much meaning as possible (presumably by embedding such tables), and they generally work pretty well on this kind of text.
    - function_seven 6y ago
      Yeah, I've used iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $text) in my work to make sure I could accept arbitrary Unicode from users, and also send that same info as ASCII to legacy systems that mangled UTF. It worked really well. When I wrote the parent comment, I tried it real quick with a REPL on my own machine, but apparently I don't have the right combination of environment variables or locales or God knows what. Didn't feel like chasing that rabbit into his hole.
6y ago

Ndymium 6y ago

This can be seen quite a bit on Twitter, both in usernames and the tweets themselves. Personally, since I think human behaviour cannot be completely fixed but can be nudged in the correct direction, I'd like to see services implement something like alt text for text, especially usernames. This way people can use different characters to be as creative as they want, but provide an accessible version for screen readers. Something like this example: 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕖𝕩𝕒𝕞𝕡𝕝𝕖 The alternative would be restricting the use of these characters, but this would kill many valid use cases and you can't just forbid non-latin characters on an international service. I've written a post[1] about this and thought I'd implement it in one of my services as an example. I haven't seen any example of it live yet. [1] https://blog.nytsoi.net/2019/12/12/alt-text-for-text https://blog.nytsoi.net/2019/12/12/alt-text-for-text

marksomnian 6y ago
I like the idea, but the de-Unicodifier would have to use the current user's locale - de-Unicodifying certain characters (e.g. Cyrillic that look like English) would have unintended consequences if you just assumed they're meant to be English.
- djxfade 6y ago
  That wouldn't work either. What if I was born with a foreign name, but was raised in a totally different country?
- Ndymium 6y ago
  My idea was that this would be something provided manually by the users, just like you can specify alt text for images on Twitter right now. I know many wouldn't bother. But at least some would, and it would make using an upside down nickname possible for me again. :)
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    The hosting service can solve this million times as effectively as the users can.

cpeterso 6y ago

Here is a video demonstrating how a screen reader reads these pseudo-fonts: https://twitter.com/jypnati0n_/status/1303012163766743041 https://twitter.com/jypnati0n_/status/1303012163766743041 Seems like the screen reader could have a "say what they mean" mode to pronounce "𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔" as "this". I assume the legitimate use of Unicode mathematical symbols like "𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔" is much less than the pseudo-font usage.

function_seven 6y ago

I once used Unicode to set off some fixed width text inline with my comment. (Or, I think it was italicized? Don't remember exactly). I was doing it to work around the limited formatting available here, but I noticed a couple hours later that my comment was transliterated into ASCII. Given the time delay, I assume it was done manually. (Dang, was that you?)

nullsense 6y ago

🅃🄷🄸🅂 🄸🅂 🅂parta!!!

dheera 6y ago

It would seem to me that this would be a simple problem to solve for screenreaders as they are just 1:1 mappings, and in many cases even consecutive blocks of Unicode characters. Understandably though, screenreader software probably isn't as fast moving as other industries. If there was an open source screen reader I think I could easily make a pull request to solve this particular problem, if it is a problem.

ctoth 6y ago
It is a problem, and: https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda
- anitil 6y ago
  They were hiring on a "Who's Hiring" thread recently as well

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

srtjstjsj 6y ago

> the alphabet/normal letters, ASCII English "Latin" letters. Not "the" alphabet or "normal" letters.