thebookbookbookbookishbooky - Tumblr blog

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

Benjamin Victor

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

Hi, I have a question about how screen readers handle all-caps words? Like if I wrote "Mom told you to come home NOW!" with the word "now" in all caps, how does the screen reader interpret that? Does it inform the user that this word is in all caps?

Screen-Readers and Capital Letters

As of April 2023, screen-readers don’t really include a reference to all caps, nor does a difference in tone occur. The words “now” [lowercase] and “now” [capitalized] are pronounced the same way. This means emphasis is best conveyed in other ways. Using your example, you could write an image description of your text with the following:

Text reading: “Mom told you to come home NOW” [Now is in all capital letters for emphasis].

This works for image descriptions, although it might feel less authentic in other situations. If you want to emphasize the word “now”, you could add a period before and after “now.” This means that now would be one sentence. The period makes the screen-reader pause slightly to indicate the end of a sentence.

“Mom told you to come home. Now.”

Additionally, screen-readers do differentiate between capital letters in hashtags or words that are written without spaces. For example increaseaccessibility [all lowercase] and IncreaseAccessibility [with each individual word starting with a capital letter] are pronounced differently. The lowercase one is harder to understand. It reads as a long, jumbled word. The second, written with capital letters at the start of each word, is pronounced with more clarity. This means accessibility increases with use of capital letters in some cases, although screen-readers still don’t provide any indication if an entire word is in all capital letters.

This webpage by Perkins Access explains how to write accessible hashtags in the following text:

“It’s important to capitalize the first letter of each word in your hashtag. Why? When the first letter of each word is capitalized, screen readers are much more likely to read the hashtag as intended vs. reading it as one, long and jumbled word. In addition to helping visually impaired screen reader users, capitalizing each word benefits anyone who may not be able to easily identify the patterns and relationships between words, such as someone with dyslexia or a cognitive disability. For example, #socialmediatips is not as easy to read as #SocialMediaTips.”

Lastly, here is a page on building accessible websites if you want to use capital letters.

In closing, I would like to share that using all caps, particularly for longer sentences, makes things harder to read for many people. While it is fine every once in a while, too much can decrease accessibility and reduce general readability for print readers.

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

Kindred by Grady Frederick

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

There is no hate like Christian love

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

reblog this if youre a slut for soup season 🥣🍲

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

@pscentral event 09: comfort ↳ My Neighbor Totoro | となりのトトロ (1988) dir.  Hayao Miyazaki

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

follow me for more piping hot takes, like: 

Hey, Maybe If You Hate Something A Lot, You Should Just Not Engage With It

It’s Okay To Just Dislike Something, You Don’t Have To Make Your Loathing It Your Entire Identity

Fandom Should Be Fun But It Seems Like It’s Making You Miserable; Maybe You Should Step Away

or how about this banger:

Just Because I Think You’ve Gone Overboard With Your Frothing Hate Doesn’t Actually Mean I’m A Fan Of The Thing In Question

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

I don’t make love to you because I want a baby. I want a baby because I love you.

aka the scene francis won our vote for husband of the year

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

My whole life is a dark room. One big, dark room.

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

books in art. x

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

― Salma Deera, Letters From Medea

[text ID: The centre of every poem is this: / I have loved you. / I have had to deal with that.]

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

[Text ID: “October, crisp, misty, golden October, when the light is sweet and heavy.”]

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

Ginger Rogers in SHALL WE DANCE (1937)

[thebookbookbookbookishbooky]

the shire → requested by @shirewalker.

“I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don’t feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.”