Bard spotting on Bluesky 10 July 2024

Mx. Fee (@mxfee.bsky.social):

Accessibility chat hours~

Please do not forget that using special "fonts" in your usernames and posts can mess with some assistive tech.

Heads up that the link contains a video example and it is PAINFUL.

https://x.com/kentcdodds/status/1083073242330361856

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3awpiioa7f7e4r7r6mlplexf/bafkreiae2mzgjxuwndzur5cmo5bef465ayost5ekjidav6e4pqk5cjr2ci@jpeg

Tweet by @kentcdodds

Benene (@akw.bsky.social):

Screen readers should also handle this better, tbf. I'm trying to think of a situation where reading out "mathematical sans" before every letter is useful.

Alexandra Merideth Erin [she/her] - in my Brain Damage arc (@alexandraerin.com):

They aren't letters.

They are mathematical/technical/scientific symbols represented as letters.

This behavior is useful (and necessary) when people who need screen readers are working with texts that use the symbols as intended, where they will appear surrounded by actual text and numbers.

liv (@livfreeorcry.gay):

i don't think mathematical symbols mean something different when they're sans, or arial. the screen reader is not handling them, and it's not doing its job. it's failing, and its fallback behaviour is to read the entire unicode description of the character. it's lazy at best.

Ms. Penny Oaken (@skywitches.net):

I seem to recall iOS 17's screen reader just … ignoring them.

liv (@livfreeorcry.gay):

which is better at least than how the reader in the clip handled some of those characters... took ten seconds to not even say the letters in "voice over"