Easy Way to Improve Accessibility.

Full stop at the end of heading lines, cost 1 byte extra per headi

[Tidal2]

All the voice readers I have tried pause briefly when punctuation of any sort is used. Without punctuation the heading line merges with the text - not good!

Very few webmasters seem to use punctuation on heading lines.

While its true that the dramatic? and! marks are sometimes used, the humble full stop is often considered a byte wasted I think.

Why not use it, its just 1 byte per heading!

Any comments?

[Beagle]

That's an interesting comment, Tidal2. I suspect that the lack doesn't have anything to do with trying to save a byte here and there. It's just that everyone is used to seeing headings that way in print all their lives; in fact, in print it would be considered an error to use a period at the end of a heading if the heading's not a full sentence. Unless there's a reason to change something from the way it's done in print, people usually stick with the print convention when they get to the computer keyboard. And I doubt if many webmasters have thought about the reason you bring up. I'll confess that I always assumed the paragraph breaks between a heading and the text would put a break in for people using text readers, but evidently that's not true. Thanks for mentioning it.

I think some people who know more about code than I do have a way to add a break in their code to produce the effect you're talking about, without actually adding the "dot" at the end. But from what you say, not many are using that, either.

[edited by: Beagle at 10:09 pm (utc) on Dec. 16, 2005]

[dmorison]

Are we talking about screen readers specifically designed to "speak" the contents of a web page?

If so; I am very suprised that they are not giving consideration to the markup. Good markup would clearly demarkate title from body without the need for a full stop; and should be treated as separate by the reader software.

[Tidal2]

dmorison: Yes I am writing about text to voice software that converts text (ie web pages) to voice.

The software I use at present is AT&T's Natural Voice's free version, which apart from the voices spoken AT&T say is the same as the chargeable version.

I should add that I am not visualy impaired so I would especially welcome anyone's comment who is.

[kaled]

Headings are rarely full sentences therefore a full stop is incorrect.

I find it hard to believe that screen readers offer no pause after reading a heading. If they don't, they are at fault.

Kaled.

[Tidal2]

I think I agree with Khaled, the products I have used are text to voice readers primarily for documents with the web page option added and poorly implemented.

[anax]

I would be delighted to make my pages more accessible to page-reading software, but such software is just not widely enough available to ordinary webmasters to make this easy to accomplish. The real watershed will come when FireFox or some similar browser comes with a default "Read this page" menu choice. Macs have had speech capability since about 1985, so why this feature isn't built into everything already is beyond me.

(With respect to adding a . at the end of <h> elements: I agree with those who say this should be fixed in the software, not in the page content; something marked up as a heading should automatically have a pause after it.)

[Arno_Adams]

Hi,

Why not use an aural stylesheet and use the speak-header property. Never tried it myself, but it I think that's specifically to make headers stand out.

HTH, AA

[mattur]

An experienced screen reader user will typically listen to the page at a (very) fast rate, so attempting to shoehorn in pauses doesn't really improve usability. They can also skip by headings, links etc; and some screen readers have the option to announce structure e.g. "Heading: Blue Widgets"

So, there is no problem to be fixed here, and even if there was I'm doubtful extraneous punctuation is really a viable option. In short: don't do this.

Aural Style Sheets are pretty much dead and were always a solution in search of a problem (IMHO).

For Firefox there is an extension called Fangs that gives an idea of how screen readers may intrepret the page. There is also a time-limited demo of Jaws freely available.

[dragonthoughts]

For some other important tips on making websites accesible, it's worth having a look at these from Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium

[w3.org...]