How Distinctive Figures And Symbols Have An Affect On Screen Reader Accessibility

Posted by Rylann Langley on March 13th, 2025

Unique characters and punctuation are a significant Element of the information we share. Nevertheless it’s well worth noting how they impact accessibility. Specially for monitor reader consumers.

It’s fairly common to see individuals working with fancy fonts, characters and symbols on social websites. Typically men and women make use of them for emphasis. Or to generate their tweets or account handles look distinctive from your normal font.

What are Unique people?
Exclusive figures depict a thing besides a letter or range.

Typical punctuation marks and symbols in your keyboard are examples of special characters. Similar to the exclamation mark “!”, or ampersand “&”.

Unicode characters
Unicode is a world coding normal.

It consists of alphabet figures and symbols from each and every language in the world. Together with Greek, Arabic, Thai and Cyrillic. Every single character has an individual code that personal computers use to Screen a unique symbol.

Unicode figures will not show up on a regular keyboard. Despite the fact that they’re recognised by most units, Internet websites, and programs. One example is, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Gmail all aid Unicode people. Unicode figures also consist of miscellaneous symbols and pictographs. Like astrological, musical, political and spiritual symbols.

Of course, Unicode characters may possibly look interesting and get noticed visually. But they are inaccessible to screen reader end users. Display audience might skip them completely or read through one thing irrelevant to your person. This leaves people today feeling perplexed. And often left guessing just what the intended concept was.

This can be the scenario even if you’re making use of Unicode figures that ‘appear’ like conventional text. When a sighted user can see a stylised “t”, a display reader may well read out “mathematical sans-serif script t”. Therefore even a short phrase normally takes a very long time for display reader end users to procedure.

Emoticons
Emoticons are smiley faces produced from normal letters and punctuation symbols and https://dienthoainhanh.com/. Such as, utilizing a colon “:”, followed by a sprint, “-” plus a shut bracket “)” to produce a smiling facial area. They are distinctive from ‘emojis’ that use cartoon pics to Express an emotion or object.

The challenging matter about emoticons is usually that some monitor readers can read through them. Whilst Other individuals can’t.

Emojis can in fact be a lot more available than emoticons. This is because emojis have alt-text that describes what the image will be to monitor reader end users. Whereas most display screen readers take care of emoticons like usual punctuation.

ASCII art
Also referred to as ‘text art’, ASCII art works by using Particular figures to type pictures. Textual content artwork is commonly applied on Twitter and in on the web chats. But as it’s manufactured employing Exclusive figures and spaces, it’s not accessible to display viewers.

You'll be able to hear how a display reader bargains with ASCII artwork inside the tweet below. It’s tough to get any which means from it. And it will require quite a while to go through out.

If you want ASCII artwork but wish to be much more obtainable, have a screenshot, add it as a picture and increase alt-text.

The challenge with special people and accessibility
Exclusive people might make your material glimpse distinctive. However they’re not usually available to screen reader buyers and also other disabled folks.

Most Unique characters are important permanently punctuation and grammar. But Unique people might cause difficulties when they are:
overused
utilized incorrectly
useful for attractive reasons
utilized to convey a distinct intending to the initial character

Customized fonts and extravagant symbols make your articles harder to examine. Not just for display screen reader end users, but will also:
individuals with dyslexia
those with low eyesight
individuals with lower looking at concentrations and abilities



people with learning challenges
non-native English speakers
people with restricted time or awareness span

They make matters tougher to read through for sighted customers, much too. It's because they include excess Visible ‘noise’ that our brains should work tougher to study.

Display audience and Particular characters
Display screen viewers go through out what’s around the screen and https://dienthoainhanh.com/. They turn the textual content on display into speech.

But monitor audience deal with Unique characters differently to your standard alphabet. This might cause troubles as assistive technologies can not usually ‘study’ them. Often they are going to skip them completely.

It's because more often than not, consumers do not will need to hear just about every punctuation mark or image. This could develop quite a discouraging expertise.

When reading through a doc, monitor audience pause at details in which There exists a comma or comprehensive cease. Display audience will utilize a shorter pause for commas, and an extended pause at the end of a sentence.

For words and phrases that include an apostrophe, like “don’t”, most screen viewers will pronounce the full word. Rather than read through out the punctuation (like “don apostrophe t”).

It’s vital that you understand how monitor audience treat distinct people if you work in content.

Display reader settings
Some display screen viewers will browse most special figures, and many will browse only a few. This relies on their default configurations. Screen readers could also pronounce Exclusive people in different ways, adding additional confusion.

What this means is you could’t assurance your concept will make sense in the event you’re depending on special figures on your own.

Individuals also can adjust their punctuation settings determined by their Choices.

These settings enable the person to pick exactly how much, or how tiny the monitor reader reads out. As an example, users can set verbosity to “all punctuation”. This is when every thing is examine aloud. This may be handy for blind Internet builders or writers who have to determine what punctuation They may be utilizing.

Greatest methods to observe when utilizing Specific figures
Each screen reader is different. But pursuing these tips can make your content material much better for display screen reader end users.

Use simple English
Display screen reader users may possibly choose to browse plain English Online page. This is because it’s more rapidly to read through. Making it simpler to come across the data around the web page they need.

Stay away from jargon, more text and any unneeded special figures. Such as, generally use “and” instead of an ampersand.

Plain English uses typical punctuation that’s typically more obtainable for everyone.

Use suitable grammar and punctuation
The way you use punctuation helps make a tremendous variance to just how display audience examine your text out loud. Think about no matter whether you’re utilizing the punctuation in the proper place. And what benefit it’s including towards your writing.

Correct punctuation tends to make very long passages of text less difficult to go through. And this means screen audience have the ideal prospect of comprehension it.

Don’t in excess of-use punctuation possibly. For instance, applying a few commas in a single sentence. It would make your crafting tougher to study. This also makes it inaccessible. In its place, split the sentence out into a number of sentences.

Screen reader testing
It’s essential to understand how display reader buyers encounter web page articles. Specifically should you’re a web site or content material designer. The ultimate way to do this is to work with folks who use screen readers daily.

Studying to use a display screen reader could also enable. Although this necessitates time and commitment, it may raise your awareness and knowing.