January 5, 2026
Hold my h, I’ve got dots
Adding insular script like it's 1626
Ancient Irish letters get a glow-up; fans cheer while screenreaders say “yet”
TLDR: A blogger revived the look of old Irish script using font ligatures, keeping text accessible underneath. Commenters adored learning about the ruby tag and cheered the “old internet” blog vibe, while lightly debating accessibility and joking that screenreader support will arrive “soon,” making heritage style meet modern usability.
The internet just time-traveled to 1626 and the comments are living for it. A blogger brought back the old Irish dotted letters (Cló Gaelach) using clever font tricks, so you type normal words and the site visually swaps in the vintage look—without breaking copy‑paste or screen readers. Cue the crowd: fans are gushing over discovering the HTML ruby tag (used for pronunciation notes), with one calling it their “first introduction” and another simply vibing, “really enjoyed learning about <ruby>.” The nostalgia hits hard too—people cheered the return of old‑school blogs, adding the inaugural post straight to their feeds like it’s RSS comeback season. But the spiciest line? The accessibility caveat: screenreader behavior for ruby isn’t locked down “yet.” That single word had folks giggling and predicting it’s coming soon, while quietly asking, “can we make this gorgeous and usable?” No flame wars tonight—just a warm tug‑of‑war between heritage glam and accessibility guardians, with the consensus that this approach keeps text intact under the hood. Bonus chatter about Gaelchlo.com fonts turned into a mini rabbit hole. Verdict from the peanut gallery: keep the dots, keep the history, and keep it friendly for everyone.
Key Points
- •Cló Gaelach used a dot over consonants to indicate lenition; production difficulties led to its decline.
- •Irish orthography shifted to Latin letters with an “h” after consonants, reducing phonetic transparency.
- •Modern tools vary: Google Translate supports Cló Gaelach, but sites like teanglann.ie and abair.ie do not.
- •To preserve accessibility, the author uses OpenType discretionary ligatures to render dotted consonants from consonant+h pairs.
- •Using FontForge on Úrchló GC, the author implemented ligature substitutions and enabled them via CSS, keeping underlying text intact.