Copy that looks fine on screen can become gibberish when spoken. Screen readers and voice assistants drop bare symbols, expand emoji into their full names, and stumble over run-together acronyms and ellipses. This checker scans pasted UI strings for the patterns that reliably sound wrong when read aloud and suggests a spoken-language rewrite for each.
How it works
Each line is run through a set of rules that detect known read-aloud failure modes:
- Bare symbols —
&,/,>,<,~,|,@used as words, which many engines skip or mispronounce. - Math notation —
<=,>=,x,±, and ranges like5-10that are read as a literal minus. - Run-together acronyms / all-caps — strings like
CSVJSONor shouting that gets spelled out or mangled. - Ellipsis in labels — trailing
...or…, announced as “dot dot dot”. - Emoji — any emoji, each expanded to its verbose spoken name.
For every match the tool returns the affected string, the reason, and a concrete suggested alternative (for example, replacing & with the word “and”).
Example
The label Save & exit → triggers two flags: the bare & (read inconsistently) and the bare arrow → (often skipped). The suggestion is Save and exit, with the visual arrow kept as a decorative, aria-hidden icon rather than part of the accessible name.
Why this matters beyond compliance
Screen-reader users are not the only audience. Voice assistants like Siri Shortcuts, Alexa, and Google Assistant read button text aloud when a user asks what actions are available. A command called Upload / Share >> might be announced as “Upload slash Share greater than greater than” — unintelligible even to sighted users relying on speaker-only devices. As ambient and automotive UI grows, writing clean spoken copy becomes a standard engineering concern, not an accessibility afterthought.
Common problem patterns and better alternatives
| Problematic copy | How a screen reader may hear it | Better alternative |
|---|---|---|
Items: 5/10 | ”Items: 5 slash 10” | 5 of 10 items |
Price: £9.99 & up | ”Price: nine ninety-nine ampersand up” (some engines) | Price: from £9.99 |
Loading... 🔄 | ”Loading dot dot dot counterclockwise arrows button” | Loading with aria-busy="true" |
CSV/JSON export | ”C S V J S O N export” or “CSV slash JSON export” | Export as CSV or JSON |
≥ 3 required | ”Greater than or equal sign three required” | 3 or more required |
Tips for writing screen-reader-friendly copy
- Keep the accessible name (visible text or
aria-label) free of symbols and emoji; move decoration intoaria-hiddenicons. - Spell out functional symbols: “and”, “per”, “to”, “greater than”.
- Replace status ellipses with real state (
aria-busy, anaria-liveregion) rather than punctuation. - Test with an actual screen reader (NVDA, VoiceOver, TalkBack) after fixing — tooling catches patterns but cannot simulate every engine’s pronunciation quirks.
- All checks run locally — paste unreleased copy without it leaving your browser.