Re: accessibility- assisting speach readers with foreign place names

by "China Net" <szcam(at)pub.sz.jsinfo.net>

 Date:  Tue, 29 May 2001 10:45:26 +0800
 To:  "Ray T. Mahorney" <coffee_head(at)coastalnet.com>,
<hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
 References:  boltonmedia intrex
  todo: View Thread, Original
Ray,
    are there any commands that hide text from the normal viewer/browser but
could be placed into the code for a speech reader only.
some thing along the lines of
<textreader="Chinese city">Suzhou</textreader>
so an alternate pronunciation or explanation could be offered.
The problem with using the lang.= attribute is the language is still English
but the pronunciation is Chinese Pinyin
Regards
Mark
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray T. Mahorney" <coffee_head(at)coastalnet.com>
To: "China Net" <szcam(at)pub.sz.jsinfo.net>; <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 8:28 AM
Subject: Re: accessibility- assisting speach readers with foreign place
names


> Unfortunately the way in which a screen reader pronounces a foreign word
or place name will be
> dependent on the screen readers dictionary file.  This file is used to
tell the screen reader how to
> pronounce words or phrases.  If support for the given language in which
the word is written is not
> integrated into the screen reader software,  you could wind up with
mangled pronunciations.  I can
> send the jaws dictionary file to anyone off list who wants to see how it
works.  In some cases the
> replacement word has to be a gross misspelling of the original word in
order to arrive at a correct
> pronunciation.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "China Net" <szcam(at)pub.sz.jsinfo.net>
> To: <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
> Sent: Monday, May 28, 2001 10:30 AM
> Subject: accessibility- assisting speach readers with foreign place names
>
>
> Hi listers,
>     Whilst updating one of my sites to take into account some of the
> accessibility issues that have been recently been being discussed here.
> (Should have done it first time but the site was done a long time ago and
I
> had not even thought about speech readers etc <slapping one's self on the
> wrist />) I suddenly thought of the amount of times I was using the place
> name SUZHOU. Ok read it out loud and I bet there are few of you who
> pronounce it correctly (any of our Chinese speaking members can skip that
> bit far too easy).
>
> now for the question. For those of our browsers whom may happen upon a
site
> with strange place names or even unusual surnames and are using a text to
> speech program is there any way to help the text to speech program with
the
> pronunciation or tell the program that the word is in a specific language
> without the text being altered.
>
> Any comments on this would be greatly appreciated and may give us all an
> insight into the inner workings of some of the text to speech browsers and
> programs available.
>
> Regards
> Mark Bolton
> www.boltonmedia.com
> www.cn-display.com High definition LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon)
> Televisions and Projectors
> www.asiabase.dk  Market Consulting for the Chinese market
> www.global-indust.com  State-of-the-art outsourced components production
and
> quality management
>
>
>

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