Standard Themes: Logic for translated strings in connection with Screen Reader text can be improved

[Presskopp]

There are 2 strings including:

screen-reader-text"> "%s"

1)

Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "%s"</span>

&

2)

Edit<span class="screen-reader-text"> "%s"</span>

In german (as an example, I assume this happens too in other languages) the syntax for 1) needs to be reversed like that:

<span class="screen-reader-text">"%s"</span> weiterlesen

2) gets:

<span class="screen-reader-text">&#8222;%s&#8220;</span> bearbeiten

which is correct for Screen Reader Users, but it should rather be capitalized in both cases so the button text doesn't start lowercase, see screenshot.

​https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-themes/twentyseventeen/de/default?filters%5Bterm%5D=screen-reader-text%22%3E+%22%25s%22

We could now capitalize the strings in translation, but there must be a better solution!?

PS:
Yes, the quotation marks in our translation also needs a little attention, but that's not part of the ticket ;-)

[joyously]

Would this fix it?

the_content( sprintf(
  /* translators: %s: Name of current post for Continue link, only visible to screen readers, with space before and after */
  esc_html__( 'Continue reading%s', 'twentyseventeen' ),
    '<span class="screen-reader-text"> "' . wp_strip_all_tags( get_the_title() ) . '" </span>'
) );

and

edit_post_link(
  sprintf(
  /* translators: %s: Name of current post for edit link, only visible to screen readers, with space before and after */
    esc_html__( 'Edit%s', 'twentyseventeen' ),
      '<span class="screen-reader-text"> "' . wp_strip_all_tags( get_the_title() ) . '" </span>'
    ),
  ' <span class="edit-link">',
  '</span>'
);

It doesn't address the capitalization problem though.

[Presskopp]

..turns out this also happens in Twenty Sixteen and Twenty Nineteen.

see:
​https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-themes/twentysixteen/de/default/?filters%5Bterm%5D=%22screen-reader-text%22%3E+%22%25s%22

​https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-themes/twentynineteen/de/default/?filters%5Bterm%5D=%22screen-reader-text%22%3E+%22%25s%22

[mrfoxtalbot]

I can confirm that this is still happening. It came up in ​a support thread.

[poena]

@joedolson Hi! This ticket brings up theme "continue reading" links and "edit post" links that combine a text with a visually hidden post title.

In the themes that are mentioned in the ticket, the post title is inside double quotes (").
Example:

the_content(
	sprintf(
	/* translators: %s: Post title. Only visible to screen readers. */
	__( 'Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "%s"</span>', 'twentyseventeen' ),
	get_the_title()
	)
);

Is there any accessibility benefit to placing the post title within quotes?

The themes are Twenty Sixteen, Twenty Seventeen, and Twenty Nineteen, so it is not consistent across all default themes.
For example Twenty Fifteen uses the following code:

the_content(
	sprintf(
		/* translators: %s: Post title. Only visible to screen readers. */
		__( 'Continue reading %s', 'twentyfifteen' ),
		the_title( '<span class="screen-reader-text">', '</span>', false )
	)
);

[joedolson]

No, there's no advantage to wrapping the title in quotation punctuation in the screen reader text. Some screen readers might read them out or interpret them as a pause, but that's heavily dependent on screen reader configuration and voice synthesizer. I wouldn't consider it an advantage in any case; just a difference. If a pause is desired, then more consistent approach would be to use a colon, e.g.:

the_content(
	sprintf(
	/* translators: %s: Post title. Only visible to screen readers. */
	__( 'Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text">: %s</span>', 'twentyseventeen' ),
	get_the_title()
	)
);