Hi all. I just realised I’ve given some of my merfolk deliberately impossible names that are not supposed to be pronounceable (like ÇØœÿ§∂) but I just had a thought that I don’t know what screen readers will do with them? Anyone know? Is there a way to put an alternate text automatically if a screen reader is detected and it’s going to do weird things, or should I put a toggle somewhere with an if statement that can allow coded merfolk names to be switched off for normal text?
In my experience screenreaders will read out the individual symbols and letters, rendering your example to something akin to TshoeioiSectionPartialDifferential
Yup that was what I was afraid of.
I believe smartphones have in-built screenreaders (iOS at least does, and I’m pretty sure Android does too) in their accessibility options, you can just try and see.
(I’m choosing to believe you mean things like § as unpronounceable, not actual letters like ç or ø.)
Yep, I tried window’s screen reader and it had a go at pronouncing the symbol name in a way that was ok, but it sounds like not all screen readers will necessarily behave the same way. It might be best to put a toggle at the start of the game allowing “symbol names” to be turned off for those who don’t want them 
Some games are using a “screenreader mode” toggle, yesh.
Me nervously looking away because I make all my games with screen reader toggles…
When I last used the NVDA screen reader, it awkwardly reads out each individual letter, smashes the words together in an awkward pronunciation, or actually nails it on the first go.
Sometimes I just make the words that I really want pronounced okay as a string variable instead of multireplace.
All good thanks everyone. I figured even some people without screen readers might not want the symbolic names so I’ve put in an option to turn them on/off at the start of the game and in the stats page. Hopefully that’ll stop anyone having any major issues. (Because yeah if it’s going to try and read each symbol out every time the name comes up that’s going to get old fast!)
Interesting. What are some common structures or vocabulary that screen readers generally have trouble with? Is there something we can all put in our projects to make it easier?
It’s not really a vocabulary thing, speaking as a screen reader user, it’s really just a special characters thing. Like anything outside of the phonetic English alphabet and any other related common symbol you might start to get weird results
How would it handle a character named Sktzektklekstz?
It reads it as a single word and not a stream of letters, whether the pronunciation is what you intended to be different story but the one I use, at least, it tries to make a pronounceable word out of it