total dork:

[melannen]

So I was wasting time on LT Talk, and we were arguing about whether graphical smilies are evil or not (if you want another reason why LT is made of awesome, we came down like a ton of bricks for "evil".) But I realized that I actually *didn't* know whether ASCII smilies or *action* or well-alt-tagged-graphics are better from an accessibility point of view. Google was, suprisingly, unhelpful. I know that Windows's really rudimentary screen reader does not do *anything* involving creative uses of punctuation well, because I've occasionally used it when I really, really needed audiofic *right now*, but I'd assume that any actual good program would at least recognize things like ;) and ^_^ . (I know the default Mac reader at least knows :-) )

It'd be neat to find a list of which ones are most likely to be read correctly ...

Comments

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Maybe there's a user-editable reader out there?

[melannen.livejournal.com]

That's true - the one I've used is so rudimentary that I forgot that you ought to be able to add to the dictionary.

In that case ASCII should always be best, as long as you stick to reasonably common ones, right? ;)

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

I would think so. :D
Of course, what's common may change from place to place. :))
Or even region to region. w

(Example: I've seen all three of those mean the same thing by different people. XD )