Ruby Annotation

Small glossing text placed above, beside, or below a base character to indicate pronunciation or meaning — most commonly used for Japanese furigana (kana reading hints above kanji), but also applied in Chinese bopomofo/pinyin, Korean hangul aids, and multilingual teaching materials. The HTML <ruby>, <rt>, and <rp> elements and the separate W3C Ruby Annotation specification provide accessible markup so that screen readers and other assistive technologies can correctly handle or suppress the gloss. Ruby text is essential for access to Japanese educational materials, children's books, and historical documents where archaic or uncommon kanji require pronunciation hints.