On Aug 29, 2011, at 5:13 AM, Nicolai Svendsen wrote:
Hi Gordon,
This is something that the Infovox voices do, not Apple's. In fact,
if you switch to a voice by Apple, Alex or others do not interpret
this wrongly. I'm guessing in some places this is another way to
format the dates, and VoiceOver does not always govern how
information is interpreted
I beg to differ.
Apple's nasty habbit of saying what it thinks you want to hear
instead of what's actually written on the screen has cost me many
hours of work over the years.
There's no reason for voices to say Sunday just because someone is
talking about the sun, and the word just happens to be at the end of
the sentence.
Check out your particular voice says the following, (different voices
and different os versions will pronounce these differently)
Sat, sun, VOL, ->, :), ;), STEGOSAURUS, ST, AVE, RD, DR, PL, Wed,
Tue, Pt, TWENTY-SIX, TWENTY-FIVE (You get the idea
(and how about roman numerals,
I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII,
XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII,
XXIX, (you get the idea) It's nice that roman numerals are pronounced
as numbers, but sometimes, they're not supposed to be.
I can't tell you how many times Apple has told me something was on
the screen that wasn't, that wasted either debugging time, or
confusion over sorting order, filenames, and other various issues
that crop up as a result of having things spoken that weren't there.
Of course, this isn't new, the apple II used to do this too. The
Echo synth used to say tangent when it ran across the letters T A N.
I can't tell you how many of my summer computer camp students were
confused because of the apple claiming there was a tangent rat in
their game.
I for one don't mind figuring out what is intended myself, instead of
having the synthesizer speak something that may or may not be what's
intended.
I'm very very strongly of the opinion that a screen reader should
read what's on the screen, and leave the interpreting of that info up
to the user.
Apple's method of trying to do this for you is irritating, and at
times downright wrong, costing time and effort to try to figure out
what's really meant. I've asked for a toggle to have this behavior
turned off/on at need, (I'd leave it off all the time) but apple has
seen fit to ignore such requests.
I much prefer to hear what's there, not what someone thinks is there.
I've had to work with my 6-year old daughter, and 9-year old son to
get them to do the same, read what's on the page, not what you think
is there. Yeah, perhaps it's a bit more effort for the reader, and
maybe it's (slightly) confusing, but I'd much rather know what's
actually there, not someone's interpretation of what it is.
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