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RE: Acronyms and accessibility (was Java and accessibility)

for

From: Jon Abolins
Date: May 16, 2002 8:24AM

Several thoughts on this topic JF brought up:

One problem that can crop up with acronyms is the likelihood that the same one has different meanings around the world and in different contexts. For example, as a person in the United States who writes about privacy issues, I use the acronym SSN for Social Secuity Number. When I've done Web searchs for SSN, however, I find it is an acronym used in other contexts. Many entries concerning US Navy nuclear submarines show up.

We can no longer assume that the document will be read by people with the same understanding as the author's. Therefore providing some help with acronyms is a good idea.

A common practice is to give the full name represented by the acronym the first time it shows up in the body text. E.g.; "Canadian government issues the SIN (Social Insurance Number)...." For many documents, this can be very helpful.

If that is impractical, perhaps have a linked glossary on the Web site can be a help.

Then there are some codes that can embed the full name represented by the acronym. I have to look them up but they are appearing to be a help for accessible design.

On a different angle with acronyms and accessibility is the possibility that the adapative mode used to access the Web document might give misleading rendition. I mentioned the Canadian SIN acronym above. If a Web document doesn't expand the acronym and is awkwardly worded, I could imagine how the audio rendition of a SIN page could sound. <g>

J.D. Abolins

>>> <EMAIL REMOVED> 05/15/02 07:48AM >>>
> On a completely un-related matter (except for the accessibility issue)...
[...]
> As a consultant to a number of Canadian Government agencies, one
> trend which crops up time and again is their persistent use of
> Acronyms: HRDC, DND/DDN, CLF, PWGSC, on and on and on...
> If you aren't familiar with these agencies, their acronyms can be
> quite meaningless.
[...]
> It occurs to me that Web accessibility is more than just html
> documents which can be accessed by screen readers; many
> consider email to be the "killer app" on the internet today.
> It would stand to reason then that accessible emails is every
> bit as important as accessible web pages, with many of the
> "rules" we apply in one area being relevant to the other.
<snip>


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