[nothrabannosir]

To be fair, combining some of the HN comments:

  $ python
  Python 3.7.0 (default, Jul 22 2018, 21:11:34)
  [Clang 9.1.0 (clang-902.0.39.2)] on darwin
  Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
  >>> import unicodedata as ud
  >>> ud.normalize('NFKD', '''It's a kinda ascii-art thing that 𝔩𝔢𝔱𝔰 𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔞𝔫𝔰𝔴𝔢𝔯 𝔥𝔫 𝔠𝔬𝔪𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰 𝔞𝔩𝔩 𝔣𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔶 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰. 𝕆𝕣 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕚𝕗 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕨𝕒𝕟𝕥 𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕤 𝕘𝕠𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕔 𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕖.
  ...
  ... 𝙸𝚜𝚗'𝚝 𝚞𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚘𝚍𝚎 𝚐𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝?''')
  "It's a kinda ascii-art thing that lets you answer hn comments all fancy like this. Or like this if you want less gothic more outline.\n\nIsn't unicode great?"
  >>>

You'd hope a screen reader would have more effort put into it than a 3 second read of a HN thread?

[baddox]

I often wonder how many of the people who bring up the capabilities of screen readers are actually familiar with screen readers. (I'm admittedly not at all familiar with screen readers or their capabilities).

[Someone]

As a counterpoint, selecting that text and choosing “speak” from the pop up menu doesn’t speak that text on iOS.

VoiceOver on iOS doesn’t speak it, either.