3 ms·

Isn't a screen reader's job to audibly convey information on the screen as it would be interpreted by a sighted person? The original intent of the characters a

by hughes 2y ago

Isn't a screen reader's job to audibly convey information on the screen as it would be interpreted by a sighted person? The original intent of the characters as mathematical symbols is obviously irrelevant in the examples. No person reading the posts with their eyes is thinking "oh hmm I wonder what is the mathematical meaning behind this bolded character". This seems like an example of a technical implementation that misses the point of the value that needs to be delivered to humans using the system.

happytoexplain 2y ago
Sighted people can tell the difference between mathematical symbols used as letters vs used as math. There are ways to solve that problem programmatically, but the point is that it is a problem to be solved, not some kind of refusal to do the "obviously correct" thing.
perching_aix 2y ago
Laser precise insight. It just so happens that being able to "audibly convey information on the screen as it would be interpreted by a sighted person" is technologically nontrivial, even now in the age of advanced multimodal LLMs. All the while screen readers have existed for decades. So until that happens, another option is for people to just... not engage in Unicode abuse like this. Or at least be mindful of the fact that if they do, screen readers will take a massive shit, so if that's not their goal, they should reconsider. Which is what the post is all about (as well a general plea to folks to at least mull it over twice if it is their goal).
- eviks 2y ago
  Not sure why you need to jump to LLM hallucinations as some kind of advance when a much simpler method of looking up a sequence of letters in a dictionary would suffice "Existed for decades" sure, but some design bugs persist for centuries, that's not enough to be confident a fix is very hard
  - perching_aix 2y ago
    Because fixing this specific problem with a heuristic is not the same as "audibly convey information on the screen as it would be interpreted by a sighted person".

by hughes 2y ago

happytoexplain 2y ago

Sighted people can tell the difference between mathematical symbols used as letters vs used as math. There are ways to solve that problem programmatically, but the point is that it is a problem to be solved, not some kind of refusal to do the "obviously correct" thing.

perching_aix 2y ago

Laser precise insight. It just so happens that being able to "audibly convey information on the screen as it would be interpreted by a sighted person" is technologically nontrivial, even now in the age of advanced multimodal LLMs. All the while screen readers have existed for decades. So until that happens, another option is for people to just... not engage in Unicode abuse like this. Or at least be mindful of the fact that if they do, screen readers will take a massive shit, so if that's not their goal, they should reconsider. Which is what the post is all about (as well a general plea to folks to at least mull it over twice if it is their goal).

eviks 2y ago
Not sure why you need to jump to LLM hallucinations as some kind of advance when a much simpler method of looking up a sequence of letters in a dictionary would suffice "Existed for decades" sure, but some design bugs persist for centuries, that's not enough to be confident a fix is very hard
- perching_aix 2y ago
  Because fixing this specific problem with a heuristic is not the same as "audibly convey information on the screen as it would be interpreted by a sighted person".