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Re: Acronym/Abbreviation best practice

for

From: Dan Conley
Date: Mar 13, 2009 8:35AM

This is interesting... when I started coding I read the A List Apart
article about abbreviations (I think it was called An Abbreviation
Triple Play or something), which advocated not only expanding everything
but also linking to a glossary (since IE6 doesn't recognize the abbr
tag). We no longer link to a glossary for a few reasons (the high number
of links it created being one), but I still expand everything. Is there
a reason not to, besides 'it takes a lot of work?' (find/replace,
especially with regex, helps a lot in those circumstances)

Dan Conley
Information Specialist
Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and
Exchange (CIRRIE)
University at Buffalo, Health Sciences Library B6
Phone: (716) 829-3900 x145
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://cirrie.buffalo.edu

Randi wrote:
> Oh gotcha. I see what you mean. I guess I didn't think of that since I
> always start at the top of articles, so I'd catch the acronym.. Thank
> you for the explanation.
>
> On 3/12/09, Webb, KerryA < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>> I've been trying to wrap my mind around this. I'm guessing you're
>>> discussing something the actual programing which would repeat
>>> descriptions of acronyms at every occurance? If I'm correct, why does
>>> it need to be different for screenreader users thatn for sighted
>>> people? For example, at the beginning of an artical about SAAVI it
>>> might say, SAAVI, the Southern Arizona Association of the Visually
>>> Impaired, began, lah blah. Then for the rest of the article, it would
>>> just say SAAVI. So you're asking whether it should repeat the whole
>>> description? Why? If I read the acronym at the beginning of an
>>> oarticle, I'll either remember it or I won't. I guess being a recent
>>> screenreader user, I don't find it necessry. My main thing is
>>> navigation. I can usually decipher acronyms and such from context,
>>> just like when there's typos when I'm chatting. Like I don't know what
>>> ajax is but I assume its something to do with programming. If I want
>>> to know more, I google, or ask. So I guess I'm just trying to say that
>>> I use the screenreader the same way I surfed when I could see. Like
>>> was mentioned, I can just go back to the beginning of the article.
>>>
>> As I understand it, a sighted reader will be able to scan through a page
>> and will be able to quickly see where an acronym is first explained. A
>> person using a screen reader might be quickly stepping through the links
>> and may not know what SAAVI is if that appears in a link.
>>
>> Kerry
>>
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