ALLIE ❤ HARTJun 15
this is going to get rejected but i respect them for saying it https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2026/26139-compose.pdf
Show threadGadfly (-booq-)Jun 15
@u2764 I respect it but also the accessibility effect of this would be apocalyptic, wouldn't it?
Show threadALLIE ❤ HARTJun 15
@gaditb would it? encoding it in Unicode is a much better solution than higher-level markup for accessibility because a screenreader can understand a character sequence and assign it meaning, but typically cannot understand higher-level means of achieving this effect, for example CSS
Show threadALLIE ❤ HART
@gaditb seeing A<COMPOSE>U and reading that as “A with an overlaid U” is within the capabilities of screen reader technology, which can already see :) and read “smiley face”
Jun 15 at 10:12pmWeb
Show threadGadfly (-booq-)Jun 15
@u2764 I'm thinking about the """
h<COMPOSE>_e<COMPOSE>_y<COMPOSE>__f<COMPOSE>_o<COMPOSE>_l<COMPOSE>_k<COMPOSE>_s<COMPOSE>_:
* listen up
* now that I have your attention lemme tell you a thing
* ...
"""
that will be immediately reached for to (visually) enable formatted text in "plaintext-only" social spaces the way MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL H MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL E MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL Y--- is used.
(And is regularly talked about as an accessibility issue.)
Show threadALLIE ❤ HARTJun 15

@gaditb is this any worse than the existing h̳e̳y̳ ̳f̳o̳l̳k̳s̳ though

like Unicode already has a problem with Zalgo text and while this is essentially making every character into a possible combining character, there are already plenty of combining characters already and the difference between U+0332 COMBINING LOW LINE and <COMPOSE>+U+005F LOW LINE in terms of their accessibility implications seems slight to me