4 ms·

Surprised at how poorly most of the screen readers seem to handle it. Will avoid the characters knowing this (not that I used them much to begin with), but I do

by Ukv 2y ago

Surprised at how poorly most of the screen readers seem to handle it. Will avoid the characters knowing this (not that I used them much to begin with), but I do also feel it's something that should be fixed on the screen reader side. Completely understandable to fail at fake improvised fonts (like ꓄ꃅꀤꌗ) made from characters that just happen to look similar - but here the characters really are meant to represent their ASCII-range counterparts and Unicode defines compatibility equivalence/normalization to deal with it. Here the use is fairly frivolous, but most such character sets do have legitimate use - like fullwidth latin characters for readability when used alongside CJK - so really shouldn't just be skipped.

happytoexplain 2y ago
Isn't this by definition not a legitimate use? They are mathematical symbols, not linguistic graphemes. Readers could dynamically read out the description of every non-letter, though that could be more confusing than helpful in some situations. They could explicitly add these cases as letters, though that would make the reader attempt to read math as words. Simply skipping them seems like the worst option, though. Legitimate or not, it is in practice a real-world usage, so readers should probably account for it, though I can't say I blame them for not doing so. Deciding how to treat every block of Unicode case-by-case would be an impossible task.
- Ukv 2y ago
  > could explicitly add these cases as letters, Unicode already defines compatibility equivalence[0]. Normalizing seems like the most sensible default for me - then it'd handle ｔｈｉｓ, ᵗʰⁱˢ, and so on. > though that would make the reader attempt to read math as words. For symbols originally intended for mathematical use, it probably then makes sense to add a special case to read out like T-H-I-S. But I wouldn't say that's strictly necessary - even in mathematical expressions you can have variables that are words rather than single letters, and either way it's definitely better than just skipping it. [0]: https://unicode.org/reports/tr15/#Compatibility_Equivalence_Figure https://unicode.org/reports/tr15/#Compatibility_Equivalence_...
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Call me old fashioned, but maybe if people want to communicate "this" they should just type "this" and stop trying to be so Internet-quirky.
    - Ukv 2y ago
      I think that comes back to: > Here the use is fairly frivolous, but most such character sets do have legitimate use - like fullwidth latin characters for readability when used alongside CJK - so really shouldn't just be skipped. The use given in the article is quirky - but these are real characters with proper uses and shouldn't just be skipped.
    - eviks 2y ago
      Old fashioned people dead centuries ago used formatting for their letters, no reason this is in any way "Internet-quirky", the real internet quirk stems entirely from silly platform constraints
layer8 2y ago
This is not an easy problem. The relevant Unicode Annex #15 explains: > The visual appearances of the compatibility equivalent forms typically constitute a subset of the expected range of visual appearances of the character (or sequence of characters) they are equivalent to. However, these variant forms may represent a visual distinction that is significant in some textual contexts, but not in others. As a result, greater care is required to determine when use of a compatibility equivalent is appropriate. If the visual distinction is stylistic, then markup or styling could be used to represent the formatting information. However, some characters with compatibility decompositions are used in mathematical notation to represent a distinction of a semantic nature; replacing the use of distinct character codes by formatting in such contexts may cause problems. In the context of a mathematical text where the semantic difference is relevant, you wouldn’t want NFK[CD] to be blindly applied. I agree, however, that screen readers shouldn’t silently omit those characters mid-sentence. At the very least, they should say something like “five unsupported characters omitted”.
- Ukv 2y ago
  To me normalization seems preferable over just skipping the text in all situations including math, and it's trivial to do, so I think makes for a sensible default. Certainly they could then start adding special cases, reading out symbols intended for mathematical use like T-H-I-S (though, mathematical expressions often still have words). I'm not sure about "five unsupported characters omitted". Would probably need feedback from someone who actually uses a screen reader to be sure, but I feel that's less useful than normalization. Maybe a tone/voice alteration to indicate this? (playing with narrator, it does already change voice for control information)

by Ukv 2y ago

happytoexplain 2y ago

Isn't this by definition not a legitimate use? They are mathematical symbols, not linguistic graphemes. Readers could dynamically read out the description of every non-letter, though that could be more confusing than helpful in some situations. They could explicitly add these cases as letters, though that would make the reader attempt to read math as words. Simply skipping them seems like the worst option, though. Legitimate or not, it is in practice a real-world usage, so readers should probably account for it, though I can't say I blame them for not doing so. Deciding how to treat every block of Unicode case-by-case would be an impossible task.

Ukv 2y ago
> could explicitly add these cases as letters, Unicode already defines compatibility equivalence[0]. Normalizing seems like the most sensible default for me - then it'd handle ｔｈｉｓ, ᵗʰⁱˢ, and so on. > though that would make the reader attempt to read math as words. For symbols originally intended for mathematical use, it probably then makes sense to add a special case to read out like T-H-I-S. But I wouldn't say that's strictly necessary - even in mathematical expressions you can have variables that are words rather than single letters, and either way it's definitely better than just skipping it. [0]: https://unicode.org/reports/tr15/#Compatibility_Equivalence_Figure https://unicode.org/reports/tr15/#Compatibility_Equivalence_...
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Call me old fashioned, but maybe if people want to communicate "this" they should just type "this" and stop trying to be so Internet-quirky.
  - Ukv 2y ago
    I think that comes back to: > Here the use is fairly frivolous, but most such character sets do have legitimate use - like fullwidth latin characters for readability when used alongside CJK - so really shouldn't just be skipped. The use given in the article is quirky - but these are real characters with proper uses and shouldn't just be skipped.
  - eviks 2y ago
    Old fashioned people dead centuries ago used formatting for their letters, no reason this is in any way "Internet-quirky", the real internet quirk stems entirely from silly platform constraints

layer8 2y ago

This is not an easy problem. The relevant Unicode Annex #15 explains: > The visual appearances of the compatibility equivalent forms typically constitute a subset of the expected range of visual appearances of the character (or sequence of characters) they are equivalent to. However, these variant forms may represent a visual distinction that is significant in some textual contexts, but not in others. As a result, greater care is required to determine when use of a compatibility equivalent is appropriate. If the visual distinction is stylistic, then markup or styling could be used to represent the formatting information. However, some characters with compatibility decompositions are used in mathematical notation to represent a distinction of a semantic nature; replacing the use of distinct character codes by formatting in such contexts may cause problems. In the context of a mathematical text where the semantic difference is relevant, you wouldn’t want NFK[CD] to be blindly applied. I agree, however, that screen readers shouldn’t silently omit those characters mid-sentence. At the very least, they should say something like “five unsupported characters omitted”.

Ukv 2y ago
To me normalization seems preferable over just skipping the text in all situations including math, and it's trivial to do, so I think makes for a sensible default. Certainly they could then start adding special cases, reading out symbols intended for mathematical use like T-H-I-S (though, mathematical expressions often still have words). I'm not sure about "five unsupported characters omitted". Would probably need feedback from someone who actually uses a screen reader to be sure, but I feel that's less useful than normalization. Maybe a tone/voice alteration to indicate this? (playing with narrator, it does already change voice for control information)