The times sign (HTML entity) is not correctly read by Voice Over

[terracoda]

@mbarlow12 in the scientific notation, × is read out literally by VoiceOver.
Is it being read out correctly as "times" in NVDA?

Edited: That was supposed to be a question.

[terracoda]

By literally, I meant VoiceOver says, "and times".

[terracoda]

Here's a screenshot of the problem.
I am wondering if we need a special character set for the browser to recognize the HTML entity?

[mbarlow12]

In our alert implementation, we're setting textContent of the aria-live elements which strips any html in the content. If we want html entities in the alerts, we'll need to set innerHTML instead.

@jessegreenberg I'll make an issue to discuss if we want to go this route or whether for cases such as this, we should simply spell out "times" (which is quite simple).

[jessegreenberg]

I like the idea of using innerHTML for this, would there be any consequences in using AccessibilityUtil.setTextContent in AriaHerald?

[mbarlow12]

After @jessegreenberg's commit for phetsims/scenery-phet#441, VO renders the entity as the correct symbol; however, it's read as "multiplication" instead of "times".

What's really odd is that the exact same text is in the lists describing each mass (first heading under the Play Area). In that case, VO properly reads "times". The only major difference here is that the aria-live elements are in a <p> tag while the list is, obviously, in an <li> element. I also suppose there could be ways that VO tweaks it's reading with aria-live elements. We'll likely need to investigate this further.

For now, in the ISLC sims, I'll create a function for alerts that will write the word 'times' into the alert instead of the entity.

[terracoda]

@mbarlow12, great for trying to resolve this.

I agree, it is more likely that the difference is caused by the aria-live region, rather than whether the content is in a <p> versus a <li>. Both paragraphs and list items are meant for content and there should not be any difference between them.

I think it is best to use the word, "times", at least in the alert until we have time to investigate this further. It would just be too strange for users to hear, "multiplication", instead of "times" in any interviews that will happen early in the new year.

It seems safe to leave the HTML entity in the PDOM page content if that's easy to do. However, if it is easier to swap them both out, please do so.

[terracoda]

@mbarlow12, just adding some references, in case we need them to investigate further:

• https://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/charref
• other values for times: ×, ×, and ×

More resources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XML_and_HTML_character_entity_references#Character_entity_references_in_HTML
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication_sign
• https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/00D7/index.htm
• https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/06/all-about-unicode-utf8-character-sets/

[terracoda]

@mbarlow12, we are using a <meta charset="utf-8">. Did you try the other entities, ×, or × in case it matters?

It likely won't matter since the entity is correctly rendered in the PDOM, just not in the alert.

[terracoda]

@mbarlow12, I also sent a question to the W3C WAI Interest Group list ([email protected])

[terracoda]

@mbarlow12, I think we decided at our design meeting on Dec 17, 2018 that we will use words for scientific notation, at least for sure for the alerts, and I'll move this issue to the a11y-research repo.

[terracoda]

@mbarlow12, I assume the text-based strings for scientific notation in the design document are sufficient to implement this change. Let me know if you need anything else.

Once implemented, we can close this issue.
I have created a new issue in phetsims/a11y-research#128 .

[terracoda]

I just verified with VoiceOver that the multiplication sign has not been changed to the word, "times".

I'll mark this issue on hold until we resume work on this sim. There is no scientific notation in GFL:BASICS and that sim is our priority at the moment.

[terracoda]

@zepumph, just removing onhold.

[terracoda]

@zepumph, I think I took care of this by using the word "times" instead of a coded representation of the symbol, see #150
I'll mark this for you to review, too. Apologies, I forgot we had an open issue for this.