Hi Travis I totally and completely agree with you here. The screen-reader's job is to read the contents of the screen, not to interpret it into something entirely different. let's see, what does your synthesiser make of the letters IE? Yes, I typed the letter "I" then the letter "E". If you get what I get, the two above letters are change to "That is".
I didn't type "That is", did i? No, I typed "IE" which as we all know has more than one meaning. So why is it being changed from "I E" to "That is"? It' being changed because some smart Alek decided that it should be changed. I disagree totally and very strongly with that assertion. As Travis quite rightly says, when you're programming or proof-reading and you come across these abbreviations which are interpreted into something totally different from what the author intended, and it changes the context totally. Yes, possibly in the specific context I originally raised this topic it might have been a correct interpretation. And yes, it is true that iVox does some of this stuff as well. But I really really hope that Apple will consider giving us the option some time of turning these things off. Possibly you can edit some of them out by means of the pronunciation section in VoiceOver Utility. I must check that. But some of them would appear to be hard wired. Gordon On 30 Aug 2011, at 15:42, Travis Siegel wrote: I beg to differ. Apple's nasty habbit of saying what it thinks you want to hear instead of what's actually written on the screen has cost me many hours of work over the years. There's no reason for voices to say Sunday just because someone is talking about the sun, and the word just happens to be at the end of the sentence. Check out your particular voice says the following, (different voices and different os versions will pronounce these differently) Sat, sun, VOL, ->, :), ;), STEGOSAURUS, ST, AVE, RD, DR, PL, Wed, Tue, Pt, TWENTY-SIX, TWENTY-FIVE (You get the idea (and how about roman numerals, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, (you get the idea) It's nice that roman numerals are pronounced as numbers, but sometimes, they're not supposed to be. I can't tell you how many times Apple has told me something was on the screen that wasn't, that wasted either debugging time, or confusion over sorting order, filenames, and other various issues that crop up as a result of having things spoken that weren't there. Of course, this isn't new, the apple II used to do this too. The Echo synth used to say tangent when it ran across the letters T A N. I can't tell you how many of my summer computer camp students were confused because of the apple claiming there was a tangent rat in their game. I for one don't mind figuring out what is intended myself, instead of having the synthesizer speak something that may or may not be what's intended. I'm very very strongly of the opinion that a screen reader should read what's on the screen, and leave the interpreting of that info up to the user. Apple's method of trying to do this for you is irritating, and at times downright wrong, costing time and effort to try to figure out what's really meant. I've asked for a toggle to have this behavior turned off/on at need, (I'd leave it off all the time) but apple has seen fit to ignore such requests. I much prefer to hear what's there, not what someone thinks is there. I've had to work with my 6-year old daughter, and 9-year old son to get them to do the same, read what's on the page, not what you think is there. Yeah, perhaps it's a bit more effort for the reader, and maybe it's (slightly) confusing, but I'd much rather know what's actually there, not someone's interpretation of what it is. <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
