roman numerals spoken instead of letters

By Cory K, 12 October, 2023

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

If you belong to the Tech VI list and read your email with voiceover on, using iOS 17, does your device say "tech 6 instead of "Tech VI? If so, has any of you reported it yet? I'm planning on doing so myself. We have a "CVI" center here at my work and VO also says "106" instead of CVI.

Options

Comments

By PaulMartz on Monday, October 23, 2023 - 12:48

When I read your post, Alex pronounced vi as a word that rhymes with eye, and Alison announced the numeral six. But as I type this comment into the edit box, Alison pronounces vi like the word vee. So there you go, three different pronunciations.

You should be able to specify a custom pronunciation in VoiceOver settings.

By OldBear on Monday, October 23, 2023 - 12:48

This is one of those features many screen readers across platforms inflict on blind people. I think the exception is JAWS, offering an option to turn off the speaking of roman numerals. As far as I know, your only options with iOS and VO are to monkey with the pronunciation, or get used to it. Either change the most common ones, like IV, and the ones you come across in the future, or spend hours and hours changing every roman numeral up to the point you can't stand fooling with it anymore. Then you're pronunciation dictionary will get deleted in some future update, and you have to start all over again.

By Brian on Monday, October 23, 2023 - 12:48

If you go OldBear's route, be aware of capitalization. Or else you may end up with something like "Apple6s" instead of "AppleVis".

By Dennis Westphal on Monday, October 23, 2023 - 12:48

but also with times. For example in WhatsApp where it says "last seen at 10:07 a.m." for me it often says "last seen at X:07 a.m."

It only seems to happen with the vocalizer voices. That is the only reason I switched to eloquence on my phone. The thing is that it seems to happen randomely.

By Brian on Monday, October 23, 2023 - 12:48

Under VoiceOver > Verbosity. . .
How do you have it set to read numbers?
• As Digits?
or
• As Words?

Just curious.

By OldBear on Monday, October 23, 2023 - 12:48

It should probably be a feature request to Apple for the option to turn off Roman numerals, and expanding abbreviations while they're at it. It really isn't a bug. Someone, long, long ago in the history of text to speech, decided that Roman numerals were so frequently used, and people were so completely incapable of mentally translating those combinations of letters into numerals that they just had to be spoken, even if they were not Roman numerals. Same goes for expanding abbreviations. It is utterly vital that 5 ST be spoken as five saint, or ST Martin be spoken as Street Martin--depending on the screen reader being used, of course.