Wasn’t there a whole discussion like 5 years ago about deprecating multi-line doc comments (/** */ and /*! */) in Rust, in favor of using /// and //! exclusively, but a blind developer raised a pretty important accessibility issue with that, because their screen reader would always interject “slash slash slash” in the middle of a sentence when they were reading the docs.
I was trying to find the issue in a web search, but failed.
If I remember correctly it was important to keep multi-line doc comments in the language even if they are seldomly used, because it allows developers using assistive technology the possibility to read doc comments uninterrupted.
I remember the issue being quite a bit ago, so perhaps the tooling has improved in the meantime (I only use screen readers for testing, not developing, so I wouldn’t know). If not, perhaps Java doing this will be the catalist.
I imagine that it isn’t hard for developers with screen readers to have an editor macro turn /// comments into /** and back in the rust world. But if /// were the only option then there is no such workaround for developers and their only options are to endure or request the improvements (or send a PR if using open source tools).
I was trying to find the issue in a web search, but failed.
If I remember correctly it was important to keep multi-line doc comments in the language even if they are seldomly used, because it allows developers using assistive technology the possibility to read doc comments uninterrupted.