Twitter to Update Screen Reader to Pronounce “#” as “Hashtag”

Screen readers are software programs that provide blind users to read the text that is displayed on the screen with a speech synthesizer. People who have difficulty in seeing or can’t see at all, due to medical conditions such as blindness, might want to use automatic tools which can read their voice. consequently, the screen reader would be the best tool, that programmatically looks through what’s on the screen and reads that out loud for the user.

Twitter will now make Screen Reader to pronounce “#” as “hashtag” 

Recently, Jane Manchun Wong, a social media expert shared an update regarding twitter’s screen reader. At present, many social media sites seem to see accessibility but, Twitter has always stood out from the rest. The platform has increased its accessibility options for users across all platforms in the past several years.

In general, when screen readers see a “#” symbol, it only knows the symbol is a number sign, therefore it only pronounces it as “number sign”. The platform recently updated the Screen Reader to pronounce “#” as “hashtag” instead of something like “pound” or “number sign”. VoiceOver, the built in-screen reader on ios devices, has a full range of features which a sighted user is enjoying in his/her Twitter news feed.

However, you can enable this feature by tapping on Settings and Privacy, entering the Accessibility menu and enable the hashtag feature as shown in the image.

Unfortunately, the feature is available only for iOS users. The update may be available for Android users in coming weeks.

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