A proposed scheme for parsing preformatted alt text


> On Sep 11, 2020, at 1:33 PM, James Tomasino <tomasino at lavabit.com> wrote:
> 
> On 9/11/20 8:22 PM, Nathan Galt wrote:
>> Oh, huh. My assumption would be that screenreaders wouldn?t read 
anything in preformatted-text blocks if there were any alt text available.
>> 
>> (Yes, my assumption is that 99.9999% of the time, the page will 
download faster than a screenreader can speak.)
>> 
>> Back in HTML land, if an image has no alt attribute at all, the usual 
screenreader behavior is to read the filename out loud. Because this is 
time-wasting noise 99.999% of the time, web authors are repeatedly urged 
to add `alt=??` (empty alt attributes) to images that blind people don?t 
need to care about (purely presentational ones, for example).
>> 
>> At any rate, if I were blind, I?d want a ?skip past the preformatted 
block I?m in? if my client were set to read out preformatted-text blocks. 
I have no idea how hard this would be to program in a GUI-based Gemini 
client, though, for any OS.
> 
> I've invited the Rhapsode maintainer to join us on the mailing list so 
we can get the perspective of a dev of an actual accessible gemini client. 
I hope that will help guide our assumptions in this area better. My own 
expectations of how a screen reader would work differ a bit from what 
you're saying, but rather than muddy the waters more I'll wait and hope 
Adrian jumps in here.

Good call. I?ve used VoiceOver occasionally on iOS (it can be difficult to 
see your phone?s screen when you?re donating platelets), but I?m mostly a 
tourist when it comes to designing things for blind people.

I have a lot more experience using voice _control_ on Windows Vista, but I 
haven?t noticed any potential issues with the format that might seriously 
impact people whose arms don?t work right for long periods of time.

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