4 ms·

Why do the browsers not fix this? It would be like, five minutes to write a text preprocessor in JS to solve this problem,

treve 2y ago
It's intended behavior. They are mathematical symbols and have a different semantic meaning.
- oniony 2y ago
  And yet every human that sees them used this way gets it. It would not be that hard for the screen reader software to do similarly.
  - happytoexplain 2y ago
    Difficulty isn't the problem, as stated. The issue is that software doesn't know what "used this way" means - only humans do.
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      Please. You could get good results with basic heuristics, without even using AI.
    - eternityforest 2y ago
      They can just add a toggle to enable math mode, since I'm guessing decorative use is many times more common except maybe in school or something. I'm not sure I've ever seen a document where I'd want in read as anything but normal Italic text, the only time I ever see typeset math is PDF datasheets.
    - oniony 2y ago
      It would be fairly trivial to detect: configure the mapping to the Latin alphabet and run a few words against a dictionary.
- eviks 2y ago
  Semantic meaning lies in the semantic organ, which easily reads it as formatted not
happytoexplain 2y ago
Making assumptions about the semantic intention of characters is dangerous (it falls into the category of "cute" behavior of software attempting to be helpful). If you do this, the reader will attempt to pronounce mathematical formulas like words. Admittedly this is a common mis-use of these characters, so I'm not sure what the best compromise is, but there isn't an obvious compromise (hence the answer to "why don't they fix this").
- alistairSH 2y ago
  Isn’t the “compromise” for platforms add proper text editors to their input fields (lessening the need for using symbols-as-text)? This should be a solved problem.
- rerdavies 2y ago
  Is it really a common mis-use? I don't think so.
  - perching_aix 2y ago
    Yes. I see it all the time on YouTube in video titles for example. Common with specific genres of music videos.
- p1mrx 2y ago
  Maybe you could train an LLM to recognize formulas (how else are you going to speak a formula coherently?) and treat the rest as normalized text.
perching_aix 2y ago
Because it's not on the browser to fix it, unless it provides screen reading capabilities of its own, which e.g. Google Chrome doesn't. Instead, Google Chrome specifically will make a so-called accessibility tree available through whatever APIs for external code to parse and evaluate. The relevant parties involved are the websites hosting the content, the people producing the content, and the developers developing the screen readers (and potentially the admins who control the screen reader application that is deployed). None of these are the browser.

treve 2y ago

It's intended behavior. They are mathematical symbols and have a different semantic meaning.

oniony 2y ago
And yet every human that sees them used this way gets it. It would not be that hard for the screen reader software to do similarly.
- happytoexplain 2y ago
  Difficulty isn't the problem, as stated. The issue is that software doesn't know what "used this way" means - only humans do.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Please. You could get good results with basic heuristics, without even using AI.
  - eternityforest 2y ago
    They can just add a toggle to enable math mode, since I'm guessing decorative use is many times more common except maybe in school or something. I'm not sure I've ever seen a document where I'd want in read as anything but normal Italic text, the only time I ever see typeset math is PDF datasheets.
  - oniony 2y ago
    It would be fairly trivial to detect: configure the mapping to the Latin alphabet and run a few words against a dictionary.
eviks 2y ago
Semantic meaning lies in the semantic organ, which easily reads it as formatted not

happytoexplain 2y ago

Making assumptions about the semantic intention of characters is dangerous (it falls into the category of "cute" behavior of software attempting to be helpful). If you do this, the reader will attempt to pronounce mathematical formulas like words. Admittedly this is a common mis-use of these characters, so I'm not sure what the best compromise is, but there isn't an obvious compromise (hence the answer to "why don't they fix this").

alistairSH 2y ago
Isn’t the “compromise” for platforms add proper text editors to their input fields (lessening the need for using symbols-as-text)? This should be a solved problem.
rerdavies 2y ago
Is it really a common mis-use? I don't think so.
- perching_aix 2y ago
  Yes. I see it all the time on YouTube in video titles for example. Common with specific genres of music videos.
p1mrx 2y ago
Maybe you could train an LLM to recognize formulas (how else are you going to speak a formula coherently?) and treat the rest as normalized text.

perching_aix 2y ago

Because it's not on the browser to fix it, unless it provides screen reading capabilities of its own, which e.g. Google Chrome doesn't. Instead, Google Chrome specifically will make a so-called accessibility tree available through whatever APIs for external code to parse and evaluate. The relevant parties involved are the websites hosting the content, the people producing the content, and the developers developing the screen readers (and potentially the admins who control the screen reader application that is deployed). None of these are the browser.