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ordinal numbers

for

From: Peter Weil
Date: Apr 30, 2008 1:10PM

I'm wondering how screen readers handle ordinal numbers that are not
spelled out; e.g.,

107th Congress
323rd Fighter Wing
59th Street

Are screen readers smart enough to recognize these as ordinals and
pronounce them as such? Or should web authors treat these as
abbreviations? Example:

<abbr title="fifty ninth">59th</abbr> Street

Otherwise, I would imagine that screen readers' pronunciation of these
numbers is going to sound pretty ugly (not that the <abbr> tag + title
necessarily solves the accessibility problem)

I suppose it would be ideal to spell these terms out, but the Chicago
Manual of Style (and others, I suspect) call for spelling out ordinal
numerals of only one hundred or less. And editors (the ones that send
us the copy) don't always don't spell these out, either.

How do others treat these elements in html?

--
Peter Weil, Web Developer
University Communications
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Phone: 608-262-6538
Email: <EMAIL REMOVED>