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Re: best practice for Americanized foreign words

for

From: Chris O'Brien
Date: Jul 15, 2021 11:03AM

The actual French pronunciation should suit you fine then.

Chris O'Brien
Director of Accessibility
Legal and Litigation
416.224.7769


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Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2021 11:48 AM
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Subject: Re: [WebAIM] best practice for Americanized foreign words

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Sorry for the delay in following up.
I had hoped to get a screen reader to speak it as an American would say it, which is close to "tray." But JAWS speaks the "s."I think I have persuaded my friend to just change the word to "very" and be done with this.
I should have said in my original post that I was bringing this up because I think there is a bigger issue with Americanized words. Unfortunately, I cannot recall a good example but I know that I have heard French and Italian cooking terms mangled by screen readers Some European names of organizations I think also get mispronounced. I am not sure it is fair to mark these up as foreign language words since Americans sometimes try to use them as English.
I have never been involved in developing web content that involved such words before, So this struck me as something I had never seriously considered.
I like David's suggestions and will save some notes in case I ever encounter this again.

Jeff
-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of David Engebretson Jr.
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2021 7:45 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] best practice for Americanized foreign words

Could you put a span around the word for "en" instances?
Example:
This is tres <span class="visually-hidden"> (tray)</span>

I haven't heard the word (tres (tray)) used in English vernacular since the early 90's, but I like it (probably since I was in my early 20's last time I heard it).

How about <span aria-hidden="true">tres</span><span class="visually-hidden">tray</span>

That way it is screen reader agnostic?

Peace,
David