Earlier quoted context omitted.
We called those corrupted-looking fonts "Zalgo"
Name coming from this post IIRC: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1091116
What an epic response.
Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere
111–120 of 172 posts
Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere
#112This is (ab)using unicode, for example the F is actually a Mathematical Bold Fraktur Capital F: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D571 This is terrible for screen readers and the like which are unable to read or understand these unicode characters making accessibility a real concern.
Could also have issues with systems that have broken 16-bit-only Unicode support (Java, Windows, ...) in which code points beyond U+FFFF have to be encoded with some surrogate pair nonsense that is likely untested in many text-handling situations.
That's like saying UTF-8 requires "nonsense" pair, triplet, or quadruplet chars. UTF-16 handles all Unicode code points just fine. UCS-2 does not. Windows transitioned from UCS-2 to UTF-16 long ago.
Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere
#113This is (ab)using unicode, for example the F is actually a Mathematical Bold Fraktur Capital F: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D571 This is terrible for screen readers and the like which are unable to read or understand these unicode characters making accessibility a real concern.
Things like screen readers can still try the Unicode decomposition techniques to try to make sense of the nonsense. The Fraktur F does decompose to "F", in this particular example. A better example is something like Lowercase Greek Letter Alpha which does not decompose to Latin "a", despite the readable similarity to most Latin character form audiences. https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+03B1 Though there too, ther…
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Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere
#114Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere
#115This is (ab)using unicode, for example the F is actually a Mathematical Bold Fraktur Capital F: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D571 This is terrible for screen readers and the like which are unable to read or understand these unicode characters making accessibility a real concern.
I wonder actually. Google seems to understand these, you can search with them. I wouldn't be surprised if screen readers understand these symbols. They're originally for Mathematics, and I'm sure there's plenty of blind mathematicians.
I tested the ones with circles and squares, and Google definitely doesn't understand them.
Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere
#116Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder actually. Google seems to understand these, you can search with them. I wouldn't be surprised if screen readers understand these symbols. They're originally for Mathematics, and I'm sure there's plenty of blind mathematicians.
I wouldn't be surprised if screen readers understand these symbols. I develop web sites with screen readers in mind, and I would be very surprised if they could handle this sort of thing consistently. Google spent billions of dollars learning how to search and interpret the web. Screen reading companies don't have that kind of scratch. Also, it's important to remember that screen readers are about more than just the…
I'm not trying to suggest screen reading is easy, but the billions of dollars Google invest are not comparable here as they obviously do a huge range of things and the reader tools need to do a much narrower range.
This came up at Halloween with all those pleas not to post tweets heavy with emoji due to the issues with screen readers. I get the concern, and I'd typically do my best to be inclusive with personal content and compliant with accessibility on professional content, but there is a balance to be struck - we don't need a Procrustean restriction on what are now reasonably established forms of communication, what we need is for screen reader efforts to step up and work in these cases. It may seem a challenge (especially for legacy coded readers) but other posters already linked to basic solutions that can help on the fonts and this isn't beyond the wit of human ingenuity. This is an opportunity.
Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere
#118Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't be surprised if screen readers understand these symbols. I develop web sites with screen readers in mind, and I would be very surprised if they could handle this sort of thing consistently. Google spent billions of dollars learning how to search and interpret the web. Screen reading companies don't have that kind of scratch. Also, it's important to remember that screen readers are about more than just the…
I'm not trying to suggest screen reading is easy, but the billions of dollars Google invest are not comparable here as they obviously do a huge range of things and the reader tools need to do a much narrower range. This came up at Halloween with all those pleas not to post tweets heavy with emoji due to the issues with screen readers. I get the concern, and I'd typically do my best to be inclusive with personal conte…
I'm not saying that we need to prohibit anyone from using crazy fonts. I'm merely responding to a postulation that screen readers could probably handle the text. My response, from experience, is that they probably can't, and most people misunderstand the myriad of uses for screen reading technology.
Odd fonts like this have a place. For example, I don't expect any screen reader ever to be able to interpret a PETSCII drawing.
Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere
#120𝒾 𝒶𝓂 ℊ𝒶𝓎