Mastodawn

Demi Marie Obenour 1d ago

Reminder for those who may not be aware that those "fancy/custom text" things using special unicode characters that bypass ASCII fonts to make your name look cool or fancy or whatever ruin accessibility, like hard.

They break screen readers hard, since most, if not all, don't know how to handle them properly and end up pronouncing something like "Special character S" or whatever. They're also significantly harder to read than a user's chosen font, or the default fonts on any reasonable operating system or website, especially for neurodivergent and in particular dyslexic people.

Please stop using them, and maybe nudge your friends to stop using them.

Boosts appreciated for awareness

#Accessibility #FancyFonts #Neurodivergent #Boostswelcome

André Polykanine 1d ago

@fizzyizzy05 "Bolded italicized capital Latin S", yes. thanks for posting!

💙🩷💜Brett🐡🍉🐧1d ago

@[email protected] just changed my profile name font based on your post, i never thought of this before

Sebastian Lauwers 1d ago

@brettm @fizzyizzy05 Thank you, blue heart emoji, red heart emoji, purple heart emoji, Brett, pufferfish emoji, watermelon slice emoji, penguin head emoji.

💙🩷💜Brett🐡🍉🐧1d ago

@[email protected] @[email protected] yes i know that's not so ideal but at least voice reader can read now.

yuki - queen of the snow 1d ago

@fizzyizzy05 yes!! as much as i dislike discord, there should certainly be more platforms allowing you to change your username font the *proper* way, because then screenreaders can read it fine and you can override it if the specific font is unreadable to you!

the esoteric programmer 1d ago

@fizzyizzy05 yes, this is very important indeed! I don't often see those, but when I do, I would often go to the next message, because the screenreader would take a long time trying to interpret that, and often I don't get to the message content because of that

@esoteric_programmer @fizzyizzy05 oh this just pisses me off, eloquence just doesn't read them but the alex voice will and it's so annoying

the esoteric programmer 23h ago

@J3317 @fizzyizzy05 espeak says chinese letter this, unicode that, it doesn't make sense. Eloquence, from what I know, skips those unknown characters altogether

@esoteric_programmer @fizzyizzy05 yeah i know about easpeak, when it says that i get so confused lol

the esoteric programmer 22h ago

@J3317 @fizzyizzy05 same

David Todd McCarty 1d ago

@fizzyizzy05 @tantramar

Might I add they look like shit.

Chris Mackay 🇨🇦23h ago

@dtm @fizzyizzy05 They also look like shit.

Jake in the desert 23h ago

@fizzyizzy05 nice to look at the comments section and even though there's over 90 boosts, no nasty jerks whining or throwing shade about this or anything. Gotta love it here haha. Because YEAH - this is GREAT info that probably not a lot of people know. I didn't. (Not that I've ever used one of those stupid things personally 😂 )

@fizzyizzy05
While i 💯 agree.
May i suggest a solution for (hopefully) everyone:
If those who fancy custom text (sometimes quite interesting looking) could post a picture using the font they want to post and add Alt text to it?
I am not even visually impaired but often can't read the post because of the exotic font. But i'd love to, out of curiosity.
🖖

💀 Mirko 💀22h ago

@fizzyizzy05 Does mine breaking things as well? I will remove the skulls if necessary.

Jess👾20h ago

@m1rk0 @fizzyizzy05
I'm doing some reading about emoji support right now

https://www.emodji.com/articles/emoji-accessibility-screen-readers-guide/

Emoji Accessibility: How Screen Readers Handle Emoji

Learn how screen readers interpret emoji, best practices for accessible emoji usage, and how to make your digital communication inclusive for everyone.

Jeri Dansky 20h ago

@m1rk0 @fizzyizzy05 I don't use a screen reader, but I just tested this with Apple's built-in reader. It says "skull Mirko skull".

Kevin LaRose,aka Grumpasaurus 22h ago

@fizzyizzy05 @MikeGorse Recently somebody I follow here changed their name to show those fancy fonts. At least I assume that’s what they did, because now I hear a lot of useless verbiage and it doesn’t even say the name right. They post significant things, otherwise I’d just let them go.

Li ~ Crystal System 20h ago

@fizzyizzy05 @0x4d6165 hm i wonder if you could implement a "simple" version of your name thats not using special characters and then a "fancy" version too, and then just show the simple one to screen readers, you could even have a toggle for it .. maybe hmm :?

this way you can still have this way of expressing yourself, and everything else still works .. maybe ..

SphereSystem2 20h ago

@Li @fizzyizzy05 @0x4d6165 Hmm, maybe a browser setting to only "display" ascii characters + overwrite fonts / text styling with a user chosen one if desired. Although that doesn't fix any text that is embedded in an image or something but for text as text that might work.
But then it also makes sense to just make text accessible when possible -TS

Li ~ Crystal System 20h ago

@SphereSystem2 @fizzyizzy05 @0x4d6165 really you want to something to normalize unicode symbols that look alike so like 🅰️ => A and stuff .. i think iconv can do something like that .. but i mean this breaks if your not from english speaking culture still since ascii is very english centric

SphereSystem2 20h ago

@Li @fizzyizzy05 @0x4d6165 Yes, that's true you need to also allow for other alphabets which ascii doesn't at least well. Hmm, maybe what you need is a sybol set between unicode and ascii, something that includes all the alphabets and nothing else, although that does mean trying to get people to agree to a third character set standard which oof.

Li ~ Crystal System 20h ago

@SphereSystem2 @fizzyizzy05 @0x4d6165 the issue is unicode is for script from every language, things like æ and ß etc have actual meanings but also "look like" ae and B .. you need to know purpose of why their used not what is used ..

SphereSystem2 20h ago

@Li @fizzyizzy05 @0x4d6165 Yes, that certainly doesn't help at all. Hmm, guess you would need a language tag included to filter for characters outside that language, but then that needs to easily be changed and runs into issues even then for anyone multilingual potentially, in our experience when people share multiple languages the language can switch mid sentence, let alone between them making any language tagging difficult.

Li ~ Crystal System 20h ago

@SphereSystem2 @fizzyizzy05 @0x4d6165 i think doing it automatically just wont work and what you need is something like alt text for text, tbh but anyways

SphereSystem2 19h ago

@Li @fizzyizzy05 @0x4d6165 You are probably correct on that, although given that people don't always use alt text already it is probably still mostly a social issue to be solved socially as much as a tech solution feels easier in some ways, sometimes there isn't one or if there is it's absurdly complex actually.

Li ~ Crystal System 19h ago

@SphereSystem2 @fizzyizzy05 @0x4d6165 i think its partly a social issue, partly a technical one, screen readers not handling it properly feels like a technical problem, and things like an "alt text for unicode weirdness" seems like a possible solution to that, but then the social problem is that you'd have to get people to do that, maybe it'd get less pushback than just 'dont do this at all' though .. i suspect it would, as peoples names are like .. well yknow? .. but erh

SphereSystem2 19h ago

@Li Yes, it's possible that making some technical changes could help with the social issue, but it almost certainly can't be the entire solution, making it easier to make sure text is accessible helps but it's probably practically impossible to ensure it is purely technically so some social soloutioning is likely necessary as well.

Jess👾20h ago

@fizzyizzy05 I'm guessing that a simple out of the box emoji like my little 👾 would just get read as the emoji name "Alien Monster"?

Patrick W 15h ago

@JessTheUnstill @fizzyizzy05 Correct.

Paul_IPv6 20h ago

is there a good reference on accessibility and screen reader friendly habits that i can point folks to, things like color choices, alt text, fancy fonts, studly caps in hash tags, etc.?

i keep bumping into web sites that really need to get things fixed but getting them motivated and complete in fixes would be easier with said docs/references.

thanks!

@paul_ipv6 @fizzyizzy05

This website is a great resource:

https://veroniiiica.com/

Here's a section on accessible user names:

https://veroniiiica.com/how-to-choose-accessible-usernames/

And here's a section on alt text with several sub-sections:

https://veroniiiica.com/media-accessibility/alt-text/

Hope this helps!

#Accessibility #AltText

Veronica With Four Eyes

I live with low vision, learn with assistive technology, and develop free resources for visually impaired students on Veronica With Four Eyes

Veroniiiica

Paul_IPv6 11h ago

@ahimsa_pdx @fizzyizzy05

thanks! working my way through it now.