FreedomScientific
JAWS includes soft hyphens in braille output of web content
Summary
Pronounciation can be way off when JAWS is trying to process soft hyphens it should ignore in the first place.
Example: Save the following HTML and try to read is via JAWS.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Hyphenation Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hooray for Hyphen­ation</h1>
<p>This text contains some Hyphen­action. Hope­fully it is not in­com­pre­hen­sible.</p>
</body>
</html>
Expected result
Soft hyphens should be ignored.
Actual result
The words are audibly distorted by slicing them at the hyphen.
Additional Information
JAWS version and build number
J2019.1901.66
Browser and version:
For example Firefox 65.0.2.
The problem also occurs with IE 11 and Chrome. The difference becomes clearer when the character is positioned in the wrong places:
bad: Hop­efully it is not i­ncomp­rehe­nsi­ble
good: Hopefully it is not incomprehensible
However, the words are not output with special characters or spaces, the output on the Braille display is correct.
This distinguishes the output from other special characters that are not recognized correctly and are output as "question marks" and shown as "?" on the Braille display. Example:
special⅍characters
I used https://cdpn.io/TPG/debug/qBbRNPJ to test this issue and as of today this is still a valid issue. It's happening in Chrome 83, FF 77, IE 11.00. It's also happening in all 3 browsers using NVDA 2020.1.
tested with JAWS 2023.2307.37 AND CHROME Version 116.0.5845.141 (Official Build) (64-bit) WORKS AS EXPECTED
@stevefaulkner, I agree the pronunciation is far better than it was, so significant progress has been made as the bug was written. However, there are still remnants of this issue pertaining to braille. If I open a file as described by @Michael-Detmers in the initial report, there are soft hyphens present in the places listed below.
- Between the n and a in the string, “Hooray for Hyphenation”
- In the string, “This text contains some Hyphenaction. Hopefully it is not incomprehensible.”
- Between the n and a in Hyphenaction
- Between the e and f in Hopefully
- Between the n and c, m and p, e and h, and n and s in incomprehensible
They no longer impact pronunciation of the words, but they do appear on the braille display. They are also presented as “empty places” when using arrow keys to move character-by-character through the word. If the soft hyphens are not presented visually, I contend their presence on the braille display, and in character-by-character review of the words, to still be a JAWS bug.
@stevefaulkner, I agree the pronunciation is far better than it was, so significant progress has been made as the bug was written. However, there are still remnants of this issue pertaining to braille. If I open a file as described by @Michael-Detmers in the initial report, there are soft hyphens present in the places listed below.
Between the n and a in the string, “Hooray for Hyphenation”
In the string, “This text contains some Hyphenaction. Hopefully it is not incomprehensible.”
- Between the n and a in Hyphenaction
- Between the e and f in Hopefully
- Between the n and c, m and p, e and h, and n and s in incomprehensible
They no longer impact pronunciation of the words, but they do appear on the braille display. They are also presented as “empty places” when using arrow keys to move character-by-character through the word. If the soft hyphens are not presented visually, I contend their presence on the braille display, and in character-by-character review of the words, to still be a JAWS bug.
@BrettLewisVispero braille output is still an issue, announced text is fixed