Table of Contents
Overview
Make text content readable and understandable to everyone.
Allow text content to be read by users and by assistive technology, and to ensure that information necessary for understanding it is available.
People with disabilities experience text in many different ways. For some the experience is visual; for some it is auditory; for some it is tactile; for still others it is both visual and auditory.
Some users experience great difficulty in recognizing written words yet understand extremely complex and sophisticated documents when the text is read aloud, or when key processes and ideas are illustrated visually or interpreted as sign language.
For some users, it is difficult to infer the meaning of a word or phrase from context, especially when the word or phrase is used in an unusual way or has been given a specialized meaning; for these users the ability to read and understand may depend on the availability of specific definitions or the expanded forms of acronyms or abbreviations.
Abbreviations and Acronyms
Provide the expanded form of abbreviations to users.
Some people, including those with cognitive disabilities, may not understand the shortened form of words.
This is also helpful to screen reader users.
This also helps people who:
have difficulty decoding words;
rely on screen magnifiers (magnification may reduce contextual cues);
have limited memory;
have difficulty using context to aid understanding.
Abbreviations may confuse some readers in different ways:
Some abbreviations do not look like normal words and cannot be pronounced according to the usual rules of the language. For example, the English word "room" is abbreviated as "rm," which does not correspond to any English word or phoneme. The user has to know that "rm" is an abbreviation for the word "room" in order to say it correctly.
Sometimes, the same abbreviation means different things in different contexts. For example, in the English sentence "Dr. Johnson lives on Boswell Dr.," the first "Dr." is an abbreviation for "Doctor" and the second instance is an abbreviation for the word "Drive" (a word that means "street"). Users must be able to understand the context in order to know what the abbreviations mean.
Some acronyms spell common words but are used in different ways. For example, "JAWS" is an acronym for a screen reader whose full name is "Job Access with Speech." It is also a common English word referring to the part of the mouth that holds the teeth. The acronym is used differently than the common word.
Some acronyms sound like common words but are spelled differently. For example, the acronym for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, S M I L, is pronounced like the English word "smile."
Whenever possible try and steer away from using acronyms and symbols. Screen readers try to pronounce acronyms, if there are sufficient vowels/consonants to be pronounceable. Otherwise, they will try to spell out the letters.
Examples:
Spell out “CA” as “California”. Screen readers will read out CA as “KA”
Spell out “BR” as “Bedroom”.
Spell out months, instead of “Dec.” say “December”
Instead of “$75,000/year” say “$75,000 per year”
Instead of “1-3 people” say “1 to 3 people”
Instead of “9:00am - 12:00pm” say “9:00am to 12:00pm”
Instead of “(415) 444-8989” say “415-444-8989”
Please see more detailed information on how to comply with this standard.
Unusual Words
Provide definitions for technical jargon and unusual terms so that more people, especially those with cognitive disabilities, can understand the meaning of content.
Certain disabilities make it difficult to understand nonliteral word usage and specialized words or usage.
Certain disabilities make it difficult to understand figurative language or specialized usage.
Providing such mechanisms is vital for these audiences.
Please see more detailed information on how to comply with this standard.
Pronunciation
Some people, including those with cognitive disabilities, may not understand the meaning of content.
Indicate how to pronounce a word, where its meaning is otherwise unclear.
Help people who are blind, people who have low vision, and people with reading disabilities to understand content in cases where meaning depends on pronunciation.
Often words or characters have different meanings, each with its own pronunciation.
The meaning of such words or characters can usually be determined from the context of the sentence.
However, for more complex or ambiguous sentences, or for some languages, the meaning of the word cannot be easily determined or determined at all without knowing the pronunciation.
When the sentence is read aloud and the screen reader reads the word using the wrong pronunciation, it can be even more difficult to understand than when read visually.
When words are ambiguous or indeterminate unless the pronunciation is known, then providing some means of determining the pronunciation is needed.
If the proper pronunciation can be determined from the context of the sentence, then nothing is required. If it cannot then some mechanism for determining the proper pronunciation would be required.
Additionally, in some languages certain characters can be pronounced in different ways. In Japanese, for example, there are characters like Han characters(Kanji) that have multiple pronunciations. Screen readers may speak the characters incorrectly without the information on pronunciation. When read incorrectly, the content will not make sense to users.
Please see more detailed information on how to comply with this standard.
Links
Ensure that all links are informative, and meaningful when read out of context. Link text should be a meaningful representation of the link target.
Screen-reader users may be unable to easily access contextual information related to a link.
Single word links represent small targets for persons who have difficulty controlling a pointing device due to motor impairments. Placing long lists of text-based links close together in rows or columns increases the probability of a mouse error.
Avoid the use of single word links (“Here”, “More”, “Go”). Links should be clear, descriptive and able to stand alone.
Avoid enclosing text links in brackets, braces, parentheses.
Avoid “Click Here”
Non-Compliant Link Examples | Compliant Link Examples |
Contact the County Clerk | Contact the County Clerk |
Click here to visit the Mayor’s website | Visit the Mayor’s website |
How Screen Readers Read Content
Screen readers pause for:
periods
semi-colons
commas
question marks
exclamation points
paragraph endings
Screen readers read letters out loud as you type them, but say “star” or “asterisk” for password fields.
Screen readers announce the page title (the <title> element in the HTML markup) when first loading a web page.
Screen readers will read the alternative text of images, if alt text is present. JAWS precedes the alternative text with the word “graphic.” If the image is a link, JAWS precedes the alternative text with “graphic link."
Screen readers ignore images without alternative text and say nothing, but users can set their preferences to read the file name.
If an image without alternative text is a link, screen readers will generally read the link destination (the href attribute in the HTML markup) or may read the image file name.
Screen readers will bypass images that have been marked as decorative image.
Screen readers announce headings and identify the heading level. NVDA and JAWS, for example, precede <h1> headings with “heading level 1.”
Some screen readers announce the number of links on a page as soon as the page finishes loading in the browser.
JAWS says “same page link” if the link destination is on the same page as the link itself and “visited link” for links that have been previously accessed.
Screen readers in table navigation mode inform the user how many rows and columns are in a data table.
Users can navigate in any direction from cell to cell in table navigation mode. If the table is marked up correctly, the screen reader will read the column and/or row heading as the user enters each new cell.
Screen readers inform users when they have entered into a form. Users have the option to enter form navigation mode.
Screen readers can be thrown off by homographs. For example, the word read can be pronounced “reed” or “red,” depending on the context: “I’m going to read the newspaper” vs. “I already read the newspaper.” A sentence such as “I read the newspaper every day” is ambiguous to all readers—humans and screen readers alike. The word content is another example: “I feel content” (meaning satisfied, with the emphasis on the second syllable [con-TENT]) vs. “sf.org has some really awesome content” (meaning the subject matter, with the emphasis on the first syllable [CON-tent]).
Screen readers may or may not read out punctuation, depending on the user’s verbosity setting. Ensure that your intended meaning will be conveyed in either case. To appreciate the value of punctuation, consider these sentences:
Let’s eat, grandpa!
I’d like to thank my parents, the mayor, and the president.
He finds inspiration in cooking, his children, and his cat.
WCAG Related Guidelines
3.1.3 Unusual Words (Level AAA)