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Screen Readers and "Fonts" (self.Blind)
submitted by nmgreddit
Hello! I am aware that there are people who share that screen readers cannot read words that are written using non-standard Unicode characters (e.g. characters that look like letters, but are different than the letters they look like). They say that people should not use these "fonts", and many people call them, in their social media profiles or posts. This is a completely understandable point.
However, I do wonder if this is the only thing going against them. If screen readers were updated in order to support reading these "fonts", would that then solve the issue? I have read some say that the characters are just hard to read in general.
I wanted to know your thoughts on this. Would you rather your screen reader be updated to read these "fonts", or that they stopped being used altogether. Or maybe something else?
$1
However, I do wonder if this is the only thing going against them. If screen readers were updated in order to support reading these "fonts", would that then solve the issue? I have read some say that the characters are just hard to read in general.
I wanted to know your thoughts on this. Would you rather your screen reader be updated to read these "fonts", or that they stopped being used altogether. Or maybe something else?
$1
zersiax 2 points 2y ago
I don't think all of these fonts are based on Unicode, that makes this tricky. We had a similar problem with emoji for quite some time, and those have official unicode descriptions. Non-standard fonts that are based on unicode could technically be added to screenreaders, but it would take quite some doing, and it wouldn't solve the entire issue. Icon fonts for example still wouldn't work, and those , while not super prevalent in social media posts, do happen a lot on the web.
If these fonts are hard to read for some people, not at all for screenreader users and it would take significant effort to make screenreaders read them, you have to start asking yourself what the point of it all is.
To be fair though, I have not seen any of these fonts myself pop up on my social media so far.
If these fonts are hard to read for some people, not at all for screenreader users and it would take significant effort to make screenreaders read them, you have to start asking yourself what the point of it all is.
To be fair though, I have not seen any of these fonts myself pop up on my social media so far.
nmgreddit [OP] 1 points 2y ago
I will say that after testing it, Google's TalkBack, at least in it's latest iteration, actually works fairly decent with these fonts. Not sure about other ones though.
As for what the point is, I'm not sure. Perhaps to find a middle ground, if there is any. Although that may seem like trying to appease people who don't want to put in the effort to make their content accessible.
Anyway, here is a sample of the different fonts (from $1)., and I apologise for the weirdness it may bring to your screen readers. The original text is "this is a test".
๐ฑ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ฐ ๐ฆ๐ฐ ๐ ๐ฑ๐ข๐ฐ๐ฑ
๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐
๐ฝ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ผ ๐ฒ๐ผ ๐ช ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ผ๐ฝ
๐๐ฝ๐พ๐ ๐พ๐ ๐ถ ๐๐๐๐
๐ฅ๐๐๐ค ๐๐ค ๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ค๐ฅ
๏ฝ๏ฝ๏ฝ๏ฝ ๏ฝ๏ฝ ๏ฝ ๏ฝ๏ฝ ๏ฝ๏ฝ
๐๐ฝ๐พ๐ ๐พ๐ ๐ถ ๐๐๐๐
As for what the point is, I'm not sure. Perhaps to find a middle ground, if there is any. Although that may seem like trying to appease people who don't want to put in the effort to make their content accessible.
Anyway, here is a sample of the different fonts (from $1)., and I apologise for the weirdness it may bring to your screen readers. The original text is "this is a test".
๐ฑ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ฐ ๐ฆ๐ฐ ๐ ๐ฑ๐ข๐ฐ๐ฑ
๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐
๐ฝ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ผ ๐ฒ๐ผ ๐ช ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ผ๐ฝ
๐๐ฝ๐พ๐ ๐พ๐ ๐ถ ๐๐๐๐
๐ฅ๐๐๐ค ๐๐ค ๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ค๐ฅ
๏ฝ๏ฝ๏ฝ๏ฝ ๏ฝ๏ฝ ๏ฝ ๏ฝ๏ฝ ๏ฝ๏ฝ
๐๐ฝ๐พ๐ ๐พ๐ ๐ถ ๐๐๐๐
zersiax 1 points 2y ago
Huh :) very interesting. Out of those 6 renditions of that text, the fifth one reads, all the others do not. If I look at it with a particular synth, I can see they are letter characters, but not which ones.
Are all six of these different fonts?
Are all six of these different fonts?
nmgreddit [OP] 1 points 2y ago
There are seven by my count, so I am not sure which one you are missing. You are right that these are letter characters. I guess you could call them character sets. To answer your question they are all be different fonts, as others use that word.
I personally take issue with the word as it's not really correct, but to describe the difference would be going into a bit of minutia (explained below).
​
In short, Unicode is a collection of different kinds of characters. Fonts, actual fonts, have visual depictions of those characters, or at least the most common ones. Unicode, though, defines multiple different sets of letter characters. The others sets are not made for general use cases.
Depending on how your screen reader read it, you may have heard it describe most of the letters as "mathematical". These characters are meant to be used when typing mathematical expressions, so that they are visually distinct to the regular text surrounding it. They are rarely used for this purpose though, from my experience.
I personally take issue with the word as it's not really correct, but to describe the difference would be going into a bit of minutia (explained below).
​
In short, Unicode is a collection of different kinds of characters. Fonts, actual fonts, have visual depictions of those characters, or at least the most common ones. Unicode, though, defines multiple different sets of letter characters. The others sets are not made for general use cases.
Depending on how your screen reader read it, you may have heard it describe most of the letters as "mathematical". These characters are meant to be used when typing mathematical expressions, so that they are visually distinct to the regular text surrounding it. They are rarely used for this purpose though, from my experience.
siriuslylupin6 1 points 2y ago
The second to last read in a different voice maybe the Chinese one but it was a different voice I donโt have downloaded and on my router but interesting.
zersiax 1 points 2y ago
Interesting. I know of fonts, the traditional kind, but screenreaders aren't hampered by those because at their base they are still the standard rendered ASCII or UTF-8 characters. I wasn't aware mathematics used the entire alphabet for letters of significance, but it doesn't surprise me all that much either.
Overall though it really feels to me that this is an edge case at most, and that if people go to these lengths to deviate from what is considered regular typing, they might as well go the extra 5 seconds and put a translation tbh. Like ...I'm sure there's programs/devices that won't render these glyphs correctly either, so I'd honestly say the practice is almost inaccessible by design.
Having said that though, screenreaders should probably be able to at least pronounce individual characters if they have a unicode description ... things like emoji as well as IPA symbols should have been readable for way longer than they have been, so in that sense screenreaders could probably do a bit more work to ...read the screen, irrespective the encoding that's being used.
Overall though it really feels to me that this is an edge case at most, and that if people go to these lengths to deviate from what is considered regular typing, they might as well go the extra 5 seconds and put a translation tbh. Like ...I'm sure there's programs/devices that won't render these glyphs correctly either, so I'd honestly say the practice is almost inaccessible by design.
Having said that though, screenreaders should probably be able to at least pronounce individual characters if they have a unicode description ... things like emoji as well as IPA symbols should have been readable for way longer than they have been, so in that sense screenreaders could probably do a bit more work to ...read the screen, irrespective the encoding that's being used.
AndAdapt 1 points 2y ago
I like the idea of screen readers working with these fonts better. The difficulty is when should the numbers be read as letters? As in your example it's a one instead of an i. I assume as they visually look similar, the effort to make a screen reader get the context each time seems a lot to ask
nmgreddit [OP] 1 points 2y ago
You're right. For some of these, it would definitely be too much to code in every single context. As for a number one instead of a letter I, I am not sure which example you are referring to.
AndAdapt 1 points 2y ago
Most of your examples in the word this
Kumandan1299 1 points 2y ago
Hello,
I disagree with the idea of "font text should not be used." these are the posts of people and they can post whatever they like, name themselves with whatever they like. What annoys me is the screen reader's pronunciation of those symbols, but people who are using such symbols should not be concerned with that. The ones who should be concerned are developers and screen reader users. If stuf written with such symbols are really important to you, you can add suitable entries to the dictionary. Unfortunately only the efforts of developers can solve this issue completely.
I disagree with the idea of "font text should not be used." these are the posts of people and they can post whatever they like, name themselves with whatever they like. What annoys me is the screen reader's pronunciation of those symbols, but people who are using such symbols should not be concerned with that. The ones who should be concerned are developers and screen reader users. If stuf written with such symbols are really important to you, you can add suitable entries to the dictionary. Unfortunately only the efforts of developers can solve this issue completely.
nmgreddit [OP] 1 points 2y ago
The issue is that screenreader development is pretty fragmented, as there are many screenreaders and many platforms. It would be pretty difficult for them to get them to all work the same.
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