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Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere

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Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere

#81

Post by whatshisface »

mrweasel wrote: post #70
whatshisface wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why screen readers can't just be extended to handle characters that look like F.

Well, because it's not an F, and how would you deal with this: 𓃓 I mean it's a bull symbol.

I think mapping common lookalikes to their corresponding Latin-1 glyphs would be a broad improvement, and with websites like this collecting them it may not even be all that much work.

Although, like you say, it would be nice if screenreaders could produce verbal descriptions of iconographic symbols. That would be a lot of work but it would be helpful.

Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere

#82

Post by akvadrako »

mrweasel wrote: post #70
whatshisface wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why screen readers can't just be extended to handle characters that look like F.

Well, because it's not an F, and how would you deal with this: 𓃓 I mean it's a bull symbol.

𓃓 = 𝕓𝕦𝕝𝕝

Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere

#84

Post by WorldMaker »

X-Istence wrote: post #9

This 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, there are patterns screen readers can attempt to find to figure out when alpha is pretending to be Latin a.

That said, it's still not a great idea to use them for text anywhere. It puts a lot of burden on the reader's pattern matching skills. Not just screen readers, but human readers too; everyone reads them a bit slower, and that's before you consider the usual human skill/ability modifiers such as dyslexia that make these things so much worse, too.

Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere

#85

Post by snek »

yorwba wrote: post #72
X-Istence wrote: post #9

This 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'd kind of expect screen readers to be able to apply Unicode compatibility decomposition http://unicode.org/reports/tr15/#Canon_Compat_Equivalence since there are many characters that are just visual variants. Ligatures like ffl or the like are at least somewhat common e.g. in PDFs. On the other hand, maybe that breaks other stuff and only whitelisted characters are converted. Maybe a HN reader using a screen reader c…

quick rundown from my experience:

NVDA: oss, people have hacked in normalization that they can flip on when they hear something that sounds like nonsense, and then flip back off after reading that particular part.

JAWS: people have to listen to a bunch of crap if there's no alttext and will not be able to understand your content

VoiceOver OSX: people have to listen to a bunch of crap if there's no alttext and will not be able to understand your content

Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere

#86

Post by akvadrako »

whatshisface wrote: post #25
koolba wrote: post #4

𝕷𝖊𝖙’𝖘 𝖘𝖊𝖊 𝖍𝖔𝖜 𝖋𝖆𝖘𝖙 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖎𝖘 𝖆𝖇𝖚𝖘𝖊𝖉 𝖙𝖔 𝖉𝖗𝖆𝖜 𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖙𝖔 𝕳𝕹 𝖘𝖚𝖇𝖒𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖘.

I think it will be a good way to attract downvotes moreso than attention.

ʇı ǝʌol llıʍ ǝldoǝd 'ʎɐʍ ou

Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere

#89

Post by lifeisstillgood »

X-Istence wrote: post #9

This 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 agree, but it has non-abuse uses that I did not realise I missed. For example just a simple smoke test has more nuaances than expected ...

𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕥𝕖𝕤𝕥 𝕥𝕖𝕩𝕥 𝕝𝕠𝕠𝕜 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝔼𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕙 𝕓𝕦𝕥 𝕚𝕤 𝕦𝕤𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕟𝕠𝕟-𝕒𝕤𝕔𝕚𝕚 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕤𝕠 𝕚𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕒𝕚𝕟𝕤 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕒𝕓𝕝𝕖 𝕥𝕠 𝕒𝕟 𝔼𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕙 𝕤𝕡𝕖𝕒𝕜𝕖𝕣 𝕨𝕖 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕓𝕖 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕓𝕝𝕪 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕗𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕨𝕖 𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕙𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕦𝕟𝕚𝕔𝕠𝕕𝕖 𝕡𝕣𝕠𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕝𝕪 𝕥𝕙𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕧𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕠𝕦𝕤 𝕤𝕪𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕞𝕤 𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕕𝕒𝕥𝕒 𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕝𝕤.

Re: Show HN: Fancy fonts you can use almost anywhere

#90

Post by ebcode »

whatshisface wrote: post #18
X-Istence wrote: post #9

This 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 don't see why screen readers can't just be extended to handle characters that look like F.

ኾᥱΛ᜶ұ, you don't?
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