The whole point of having Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols as separate unicode code points, rather than just using normal latin characters with style markup, is so they can be used when the different letters have semantically different meanings -- in particular in maths when š¹ and š can be in the same formula, representing different concepts. They're not a replacement for style markup.
In other words, they're different characters specifically so that screen readers can know to read them out loud differently!
Trying to 'fix' screenreaders by having them read anything that them as if they were normal latin characters, to accommodate people who like using the Mathematical Symbols block for fun in places which only allow plain text, would completely defeat the actual purpose of them.
How do screen readers handle other aspects of mathematical equations? For example, if I have an equation like "A equals B to the C", how do I represent this such that a screen reader will say it correctly? As far as I can tell, I can't.
I see the FAQ you linked states that I'm supposed to use markup for this. Unfortunately, that means the screen reader needs to understand math markup to work correctly. If that's the case, it seems like we could just include other concerns like Bold X vs X in the math markup as well.
> How do screen readers handle other aspects of mathematical equations? For example, if I have an equation like "A equals B to the C", how do I represent this such that a screen reader will say it correctly?
Am I confused as to what unicode.style is doing? Oh, yes I am. It's using U+1D400 MATHEMATICAL BOLD CAPITAL A and such. I see. Ok, thanks for setting me straight!
Itās really not a screenreaderās job to guess what a character might be being pressed into service to represent in a given scenario, and to try to work out when thatās inappropriate and it should be using the original specified meaning.
Then again different healthy humans read texts differently. There's no such thing as a canonical reading and any reading bring in prior semantics.
There was a sign posted in the break room of a lab I used to work at. It read, "<long complex equation> is easy for you to read, but not for everyone. Volunteer to read for the blind." It was a good double whammy.
The whole point of having Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols as separate unicode code points, rather than just using normal latin characters with style markup, is so they can be used when the different letters have semantically different meanings -- in particular in maths when š¹ and š can be in the same formula, representing different concepts. They're not a replacement for style markup.
In other words, they're different characters specifically so that screen readers can know to read them out loud differently!
Trying to 'fix' screenreaders by having them read anything that them as if they were normal latin characters, to accommodate people who like using the Mathematical Symbols block for fun in places which only allow plain text, would completely defeat the actual purpose of them.
https://www.unicode.org/faq/ligature_digraph.html#Pf6