WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Acronym/Abbreviation best practice

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Mar 19, 2009 11:35AM


On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Christophe Strobbe
< <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Could you explain why you are removing acronym markup for well-known acronyms?
> The dotted underline can be addressed with CSS, so I assume the
> reason is something else.

It is because screen readers read the full expansion for all
instances. It's unfair and decreases accessibility for screen reader
users to hear "HyperText Markup Language" in place of HTML in all
instances, for example. I don't think anything is lost for screen
reader and for non-screen reader users if the acronym is removed in
these instances of well known acronyms.

Jared Smith
WebAIM