Fancy Text and Screen Readers – Use It Without Shutting People Out
· 2 min read
Millions of people use screen readers — software that reads the screen out loud — to browse social media. Fancy text can be a real problem for them, but a few habits make most of that problem go away.
What a screen reader hears
A screen reader doesn’t see shapes; it reads the characters. To it, 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨 isn’t the word “Hello” but five unusual symbols. Depending on the screen reader, the app and the settings, a listener might hear:
- each character by its technical name, something like “mathematical bold capital H, mathematical bold small e…”;
- the letters spelled out one at a time;
- or nothing at all, because the characters are skipped.
All three are frustrating. A whole bio written this way can take a minute to listen to, or vanish completely.
The same goes for search and translation
The problem isn’t only for screen readers. Search engines, hashtags, translation tools and spell-checkers all see the same “unusual symbols”, so styled words don’t get found, translated or corrected.
Habits that keep posts readable
- Keep the important part plain. Your name, what you do, prices, dates, links and calls to action should be normal text. Use styles for decoration around them.
- Style a few words, not whole paragraphs. One bold headline in a long post helps everyone skim. A fully bold post helps no one.
- Never put information only in fancy text. If a key word is styled, make sure the meaning is also clear from the plain words around it.
- Keep hashtags and @mentions plain, or they won’t work at all.
- Avoid emoji between every word (like clap text) for anything longer than a short joke — each emoji is read out by name.
When to skip it entirely
For anything people need to understand — instructions, safety information, job posts, event details, customer support — use plain text. Many platforms also offer real formatting in some places (Discord, WhatsApp, LinkedIn articles); when real formatting is available, it’s always the better choice because screen readers understand it.
Undoing it
Got a bio full of fancy letters and want it plain again? Paste it into the Unstyle tool and you’ll get normal letters back in one step.