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Re: WCAG 2 draft and abbreviations

for

From: smithj7
Date: Aug 23, 2007 5:20PM

Thanks for the great comments. Perhaps providing a combination of these
techniques is the way to go. I could start a glossary of terms,
abbreviations, and acroynms adding to them as new documents arrive and
talk to content folks once it is up to add to it. I will continue with
the print version (even if it is dismissed as our standard), and then I
easily do the semantic changes using a search and replace feature for
both acroynms and abbrebiations using the correct term. Then when
semantic mark up becomes available to speech users that will be
available.

I expectionally like the idea of annonating the minutes for acroynms or
abbreviations. I actually did this when one of the minutes came with a
policy indicating changes using colors (committee of blind vendors - low
vision user). So I wrote notations of additions for speech user and
provided notation at beginning of minutes that I was adding such and
such for deleted text and such and such for added text. I hadn't
thought of doing the same for the acroynms and abbreviations. Thanks
again!

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jukka K.
Korpela
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 2:29 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] WCAG 2 draft and abbreviations


On Wed, 22 Aug 2007, smithj7 wrote:

> In general, using our current but older standards (2003), we always
> follow the print version e.g. Individual Employment Plan (IEP) and
> then use IEP there after.

Such an approach solves the basic problem with abbreviations better than

any markup could possibly do. However, especially in long documents,
readers - particularly those with cognitive disabilites - will have
difficulties in remembering the meanings of abbreviations. Sometimes
it's
useful to also provide a list of abbreviations and their expansion,
perhaps on a separate pages. Moreover, an expansion of an abbreviation
should not be expected to present its full meaning to everyone. As any
expression, it may require an explanation. (Think about "SI". That's
short
for "Système international". Does the expansion tell what it is about?
Or
to take a perhaps extreme example, consider recursive expansions like
GNU
= Gnu's Not Unix. :-) )

Abbreviations aren't really that different from other expressions. An
unusual word, or a common word used in an unusual meaning (perhaps as a
technical term completely different from the word's everyday meaning)
can
be far bigger an obstacle to understanding than an abbreviation like
"USA"
or "IBM".

> However, I also put minutes up on the website. Minutes can't be
> changed.

They can be annotated. If you think they cannot, you need to write a
separate explanatory document. Markup that may cause some expansion to
be
shown in a tooltip or optionally spoken out is tantamount to an
annotation
that has, by design, been written so that its content is available to
some
users only. So it's a typical compromise: it combines the drawbacks of
both alternatives.

Annotations should be written so that they are available to all and
clearly distinguished from the text proper, especially if the text is
something official. Annotations should be identifiable as made by
someone
or some organization, and this is one reason why abbreviation markup
won't
do - it's too clumsy to present it that way.

> There were many abbreviations and/or acroynms in the minutes so I used

> the the acroymn tag for all these mysterious letters, after playing
> detective for half.

One of the risks here is that you get the meaning wrong. It is therefore

important that you and only you have been indicated as the source of
those
annotations. A wrong annotation should be identified as a wrong
annotation, not an error in the text.

> Note: I used the acroynm because about 65 percent of our customers are

> using IE6.

Does that justify giving semantically wrong information? What happens if

some day some speech browser utilizes <acronym> markup and pronounces,
say, <acronym>IEP</acronym> as a pronounceable word (eye-ep? yep? who
knows?) as it really _should_, if the word "acronym" is taken in its
meaning in cultivated literary English?

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