Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Do screen readers read slashes out loud? (self.Blind)
submitted by clever_biscuit
Hello r/blind! I write web content for my organization, and I'm wondering something.
As far as your current settings go, do your screen readers read slashes out loud? For example, does "he/she" come out as "she he", or as "he slash she"?
It would be great if I could get a bunch of responses -- just "yes" or "no" is fine, if you don't have time to write a longer answer. Thanks in advance!
As far as your current settings go, do your screen readers read slashes out loud? For example, does "he/she" come out as "she he", or as "he slash she"?
It would be great if I could get a bunch of responses -- just "yes" or "no" is fine, if you don't have time to write a longer answer. Thanks in advance!
rp-turtle 9 points 2y ago
Yes. Also, people can adjust their screen readers settings to read more or less punctuation.
CloudyBeep 4 points 2y ago
There are very few reasons why you should need to modify text to have it read more clearly by screen readers.
RJHand 4 points 2y ago
Yeah depends on the punctuation setting but if I recall most screen readers are set to do it by default. Also depends on the voice used.
BK3Master 3 points 2y ago
For me, they do, but most screen readers have 4 categories/groups, and each one has a set amount of punctuation reading out loud. This is useful for if you’re writing a public article or assessed piece, so you ‘d want to be able to listen to every single punctuation mark as they come to iron out small errors. Conversely, you can set screen readers to announce no punctuation, and there are 2 other groups in between, (some, and most). Some screen readers even allow for very fine control over what is heard, so you can customise each group by individually selecting the punctuation marks you would like read. Remember that this only applies to reading whole chunks, so reviewing by characters won’t be affected by your setting as the screen reader will simply announce punctuation as and when you left/right arrow to it, and it generally doesn’t affect navigating by word either. In regards to the behaviour changing based on the active voice, this generally isn’t the case (at least on desktop screen readers) as the voice just follows the setting, but in case this is what is happening, you are able to directly alter how it sounds with pronoun citations and most noticeably with the NVDA screen reader, the ability to even adjust letter for letter, how symbols will be announced. This is useful if you want to make NVDA say “full stop” instead of “dot”, or “exclaim” instead of “bang”.
bjayernaeiy 3 points 2y ago
Yes, but that shouldn't matter. It's ajustable, I can switch between toggles of no symbols read, some symbols read, most symbols read, and all symbols read.
bscross32 3 points 2y ago
yes but it's configurable.
clever_biscuit [OP] 2 points 2y ago
Thanks for all of your responses. I had tested some content in a free online text-to-speech thing and it didn't read the slashes, which I found odd. Thank you for confirming that you can adjust a real screen reader to read them out.
BK3Master 0 points 2y ago
For a situation like that, you may actually have to depend on the TTS engine used as you don’t have any actual settings for pronunciation and symbols, but you can get around things like this by typing the mark in full, like "slash" or "dot", "period" (which is of course already a word) or "exclaim". The same can be' said about words the engine doesn’t pronounce properly. For example, you might change some of the letters or spacing to get the desired pronunciation, like "her my oni". Since each engine interprets letters slightly differently, the pronunciations will have to be changed accordingly.
[deleted] 1 points 2y ago
[deleted]
bradley22 1 points 2y ago
Yes it does.
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