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Re: WCAG 2 draft and abbreviations

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Jun 5, 2007 11:00AM

On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Alastair Campbell wrote:

> Given that the user requirement is for adding explanatory text,

Which user requirement? People may need explanations for various things -
like uncommon words, odd symbols, strange formulations, difficult points,
and even abbreviations.

> could we
> not just have an element for both acronym & abbreviations (and more?)
> which takes a title attribute?

Where do the "element" and "attribute" come in the user requirements.
Users want explanations, not markup. If markup helps them in finding and
using the explanations, fine. But if you can, for example, see a strange
expression explained when you first encounter, what would you need some
markup for? More importantly, if you _don't_ see an explanation, does it
help that there is some invisible markup that might make some browsers
present you some information in some circumstances?

> <abbr> seems to be the more generic, and given recent support, now seems
> to be a good time to put down in WCAG2 techniques (and possibly HTML5):
> Just use <abbr title="explanation">text</abbr>
>
> Is there need for more than one element?

Is there need for an element? What is the tangible benefit? We have
already seen the tangible drawbacks: authors throw in some markup and
attributes and think that they have actually explained an abbreviation.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/