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Re: Should we wrap common abbreviations in tags?

for

From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Dec 2, 2008 4:50PM

Tessie, Bill is touching on context---and context is everything.

Your audience is part of that context. Your document is part of that context.

Are we talking about flight schedules for Australia? Then, yes, I suspect that someone who has to hear the screen reader expand each three-letter entry in the "Day" row would be just as annoyed as my wife would be I read the schedule over her shoulder and said, "Sun---that's Sunday, dear!" (At this point, I would either have to duck or find accommodations with the dog---or both.)

By the same token, "NSW" would make perfect sense to anyone who is familiar with Australia and is expecting to encounter an abbreviation for a state at that point in your document. Even those of us who aren't immediately familiar with Australia might recognize it if we encountered it just after the name of a city.

In another context, yes, you might want to expand those abbreviations. But I suspect it is sensible to assume that the same rules apply for the fully sighted and for those who rely on assistive technology---if one needs the expansion, the other does, too. If inserting the expansion would only annoy one, then it's also likely to annoy the other.

I realize that's not a hard and fast answer, but I hope it's one you can apply reasonably well.



Cliff Tyllick
Web development coordinator
Agency Communications Division
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
512-239-4516
<EMAIL REMOVED>

>>> Bill Mason < <EMAIL REMOVED> > 12/2/2008 5:21 PM >>>
Tessie Teoh wrote:
> We are currently programming a website and were wondering if we should
> wrap common abbreviations in corresponding tags, for example wrap "Jan"
> for January or "NSW" for New South Wales.

I would just like to observe that "NSW" isn't common if you don't live
in that geographical region. :) On a first skim, I thought it was a
mistyped abbreviation for northwest or southwest.
--
Bill Mason
Accessible Internet
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://accessibleinter.net/