Comments on: Arrow Glyphs, What’s Best for Semantics and Screen Readers? ( « » « » )

By: Kevin Goldman

Kevin Goldman — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:37:33 +0000

Hi Anna, Thank you for the info. I can not get the triangles you recommended to render in IE6 (they appear as empty boxes or not at all). The "right triangle" works in IE7 but not IE6. The left triangle does not work in IE6 or IE7. Below are sample pages that can be viewed in IE6 and IE7 with two different encodings:

Let me know if I'm getting the codes wrong. It'd be great to know if the triangles are somehow feasible in IE6. - Kevin

By: Anna Sokol

Anna Sokol — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:18:38 +0000

In order to render correctly the “right triangle” in IE 6 use ▶ instead of ► . Also to render correctly the “left triangle” in IE 6 use &x25C0; instead of ◄ .

By: Kevin Goldman

Kevin Goldman — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:46:30 +0000

Thanks for pointing this out Josh. Sure enough IE6 doesn’t render & #9658; and & #9668; (left and right arrow triangles) but the up down arrows seem to work (luckily I’ve only used the up/down arrows to indicate drop down menus without using graphics). Firefox and IE7 correctly render all 4 triangle arrows. I’ve updated the comment above to show this.

By: Josh Stodola

Josh Stodola — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 23:17:52 +0000

Hey I happened to be lookign at this on my server machine on IE6, and & #9658; and & #9668; show up as little boxes…

FYI i guess?

By: Josh Stodola

Josh Stodola — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:11:14 +0000

Andlar?! Crazy…

Thanks alot!

By: Kevin Goldman

Kevin Goldman — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:42:42 +0000

Hi Josh,

I’m not aware of numeric equivalents for ←, ↑, etc. I don’t have JAWS or another screen reader installed at the moment, but when I use Mac OSX’s text-to-voice ← is pronounced “andlar” (not ideal!).

My guess is that JAWS would read ← as “left arrow” but I have no way to confirm this at the moment.

By: Josh Stodola

Josh Stodola — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:54:45 +0000

Well dammit

For example, instead of using ← use & # 9999 ;

By: Josh Stodola

Josh Stodola — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:50:57 +0000

Hi Kevin, thanks for the reply. I know the HTML equivalents for the arrows (thats how I got them to show up!!), I was curious as to whether or not these arrows have numerical equivalents for the sake of screen readers.

For example, instead of using ←, use ✏ Do you know if these have numerical equivalents?

As far as the thick arrows – THANKS! I have never seen them before, thats good to know, they could definitely come in handy.

By: Kevin Goldman

Kevin Goldman — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 14:16:20 +0000

Hi Josh, Below are the HTML equivalents for the thin HTML arrows and the thicker HTML triangle characters that can be used as arrows in some cases. Sometimes the thick triangle HTML arrows work better to denote drop down fields, etc.. Hope this helps : )

← ←

↑ ↑

→ →

↓ ↓

↔ ↔

↕ ↕

▲ ▲

► ► (will not render correctly in IE6)

▼ ▼

◄ ◄ (will not render correctly in IE6)

By: Josh Stodola

Josh Stodola — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 04:14:14 +0000

Hey, do you know of the numeric equivalent of the arrows? You know..

↑
← →
↓