About

Version: WCAG 2.0 and up
Number: 3.1.6
Level: AAA
Applicability:
  • Text
Requirement:

A mechanism is available for identifying specific pronunciation of words where meaning of the words, in context, is ambiguous without knowing the pronunciation.

Guidance:
Techniques:

Purpose

The purpose of this success criterion is to ensure that words are pronounced properly by assistive technologies so that the text is understandable for persons who cannot see it.

How to Meet

The most effective way to address this success criterion is with technologies that can improve text-to-speech playback, such as SSML and pronunciation lexicons. Unfortunately, there is currently little support for these technologies.

Authors can also consider providing pronunciations inline or including them in a glossary, but these only work in limited scenarios.

The ruby element provides the option for inline pronunciations for CJK languages.

Additional Information

The following knowledge base pages provide more information about how to address this success criterion for publishing content: