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UK government changes website guidelines due to buggy screen readers

insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk

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Re: UK government changes website guidelines due to buggy screen readers

#51

Post by anexprogrammer »

Symbiote wrote: post #50
robert_tweed wrote: post #42

I think a lot of commenters in this thread are missing an important point about accessibility. It does not just mean "works with screen readers". It means easily understood by anyone. A lot of people confuse the terms e.g. and i.e. so it is normally better to say "For example" or "That is" because these are natural phrases that will be clearly understood by a greater number of people. I try to constantly improve my w…

Many documents and websites produced by government in the UK have the "Crystal Mark for Plain English". Details at [1]. I don't notice the difference, but non-natives have occasionally said they've been surprised when certain information is clear, such as letters from a bank. [1] http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/services/crystal-mark.html

You probably would have noticed the difference in the 80s and 90s when banks and others still wrote in tortuous, horrifically formal, English. Why take two sentences when a page and a half would do?

Usually the only places you still regularly saw "inst", notwithstanding and heretofore. If you wanted to understand at first reading being a contract lawyer helped.

The Plain English Campaign took out most of the low hanging fruit years back.

Re: UK government changes website guidelines due to buggy screen readers

#52

Post by yorwba »

waqf wrote: post #48
pluma wrote: post #45

Aside from the quirky interpreations of "eg" and "ie" that triggered this decision, the abbreviations "e.g." and "i.e." are actually problematic, especially when dealing with non-native speakers (or even simply people who had no exposure to Latin). "e.g." means "exempli gratia" -- I am fairly confident the majority of readers in an international audience (or maybe even a national one) will not actually know this and…

I don't see what knowing these abbreviations has to do with knowing Latin. They are, to all intents and purposes, English words used in English writing, and people who have had the opportunity to develop a good English vocabulary in other respects will have learned these words too. (Note, I grew up in England. I have begun to suspect that these abbreviations are used a little less in the US. But there again, if that…

You are right about "d.h." being the German equivalent of "i.e." but I've met a lot of Germans who pronounced it "daher" ("therefore"). I guess that proves a point about avoiding obscure abbreviations when someone else needs to understand what you wrote.

Re: UK government changes website guidelines due to buggy screen readers

#54

Post by manarth »

teamonkey wrote: post #19
aaron695 wrote: post #11

FFS can we stop spending billions on designing around screen readers and fucking spend billions on good screen readers.

How does a screen reader translate FFS?

Abbreviations on the web can be expanded using the abbr tag:

FFS

This also helps reduce ambiguity about the meaning of an acronym, improving the communication of semantic intent.

That said, it appears that expansion of isn't consistently supported[1].

I suspect most screenreaders would simply say "Eff Eff Ess".

[1] http://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/labelling/ac...

Re: UK government changes website guidelines due to buggy screen readers

#55

Post by rspeer »

lmm wrote: post #2

> And while ‘e.g.’ gets read correctly by screen readers, there are better, clearer ways of introducing examples for all users. Strongly disagree. "e.g." has its place; it is often clearer than any alternative. Likewise "i.e.". "eg" is unpleasantly confusing even as an ordinary reader and should never have been allowed, but to remove "e.g." too is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In what cases would "e.g." be better than "for example", aside from when you're desperately short on space?

Most of the cases I see "e.g." and "i.e." -- with or without the dots -- it means "I'm putting zero effort into putting these phrases together into a clear sentence."

Re: UK government changes website guidelines due to buggy screen readers

#56

Post by ggambetta »

pluma wrote: post #45

Aside from the quirky interpreations of "eg" and "ie" that triggered this decision, the abbreviations "e.g." and "i.e." are actually problematic, especially when dealing with non-native speakers (or even simply people who had no exposure to Latin). "e.g." means "exempli gratia" -- I am fairly confident the majority of readers in an international audience (or maybe even a national one) will not actually know this and…

> come up with their own personal backronym (like "ergo" or "example given").

I'm not a native English speaker, and I've never studied Latin, but I do have access to Wikipedia, Google, and dictionaries, and a policy of not using words I don't understand. If you come across something you don't understand, there really is no excuse for making something up instead of looking it up. It wouldn't be difficult to avoid horrors like "per say" or "segway".

Re: UK government changes website guidelines due to buggy screen readers

#57

Post by pluma »

ggambetta wrote: post #56
pluma wrote: post #45

Aside from the quirky interpreations of "eg" and "ie" that triggered this decision, the abbreviations "e.g." and "i.e." are actually problematic, especially when dealing with non-native speakers (or even simply people who had no exposure to Latin). "e.g." means "exempli gratia" -- I am fairly confident the majority of readers in an international audience (or maybe even a national one) will not actually know this and…

> come up with their own personal backronym (like "ergo" or "example given"). I'm not a native English speaker, and I've never studied Latin, but I do have access to Wikipedia, Google, and dictionaries, and a policy of not using words I don't understand. If you come across something you don't understand, there really is no excuse for making something up instead of looking it up. It wouldn't be difficult to avoid horr…

You severely overestimate the eagerness of the vast majority of people in the vast majority of situations.

Also, if when learning English you didn't use any words you didn't perfectly understand, you are most certainly in the minority.

Re: UK government changes website guidelines due to buggy screen readers

#58

Post by franciscop »

robin_reala wrote: post #27
franciscop wrote: post #7

I love what UK Gov is doing, they actually sound like the kind of business that I'd love to work with (I'm totally surprised because it's a Government) and I'm learning a lot just with these articles. I'd also love to see other governments to take a similar approach, but that seems highly unlikely for most countries including Spain (where I am from).

We’re hiring back-end developers and web-ops currently, maybe you should apply?

Thanks, it looks great and I'd consider it in 8-10 months, but I am committed to doing some contracting/projects right now.

Re: UK government changes website guidelines due to buggy screen readers

#59

Post by wtbob »

csours wrote: post #44
wtbob wrote: post #25

Writing 'eg' instead of 'e.g.' or 'ie' instead of 'i.e.' is just dumb, though. So is confusing the two.

1. Not everyone is a fluent English reader. If you are providing government services, you have to provide them to "dumb" people as well. "Dumb" in this case includes a lot of smart people who were not raised with English as their first language. 2. There is no official version of the English language. Pronunciations, spellings and style guides change over time. Disclaimer: This post is subject to Muphry's Law: https:…

> Not everyone is a fluent English reader.

I.e. & e.g. aren't English, but rather Latin. Any educated person in the Western world should understand them, no?

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