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Re: abbreviations

for

From: Geof Collis
Date: May 26, 2010 1:21PM

Hi Dennis

It would appear that by default my version of JAWS 10.0 has the
abbreviation and acronym turned off and that's just the way I like it.

I tested your examples and got NATO and Mon.

cheers

Geof
At 01:52 PM 5/26/2010, you wrote:
>Hey all,
>
>Like Geoff, I never use the <abbr> or <acronym> tags. Never been a
>great fan. I always preferred defining the first occurence of the
>abbreviation or acronym in content instead.
>
>Geof, were you implying that Jaws will read the content of the
><abbr> or <acronym> element if it's defined by the @title? What
>weould Jaws read if it stumbled across:
>
><acronym title="North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ">NATO</acronym>
><abbr title="Monday">Mon</abbr>
>
>My understanding has always been that by default, Jaws would not
>read the @title attribute on anything but <img>, <area>, <input> or
><frame>. Can it read it on <acronym> or <abbr> too?
>
>Besides that, Ben Meadowcroft had an interesting article on the
>subject a couple of years ago that sums up really well how I feel
>about using <abbr> and <acronym>:
><http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/webdev/articles/abbr-vs-acronym.shtml>;.
>
>Part of my dislike for those tags also goes back to a few years ago,
>when one or the other wasn't properly supported in MSIE (can't
>remember which one if was or what the support problem was). Now,
>part of this may be based on misunderstandiong from my part, but
>both tags have always felt broken to me for a few reasons:
>
>the differences in interpretation between most dictionnairies and
>what the W3C defines
>the inconsistent use of both terms in the HTML spec (the W3C mixes
>both terms in the standard)
>the lack of device independancy (in this case, the mouse) and won't
>be usable with the keyboard only
>it's not visible to sighted users unless their mouse hovers over the content
>etc.
>
>I'd much rather explain what the acronym or abbreviation means on
>it's first occurence in the page (other than navigation or headings,
>for obvious reasons) by presenting it explicitely first, then give
>out it's acronym or abbreviation in parenthesis. A side practice
>would be to do the exact opposite, but always on the first occurence
>(still, excluding headings or navigation). Examples :
>
>blah blah blah NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) blah blah blah
>blah blah blah North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) blah blah blah
>
>Other possibilities could include refering to footnotes on the same
>web page, or using a glossary on the website for example. As
>imperfect as these two options may be, both are more interesting to
>me than relying on the <abbr> or <acronym> tag.
>
>--
>Denis Boudreau
>www.twitter.com/dboudreau
>
>
>
>
>On 2010-05-26, at 11:16 AM, Geof Collis wrote:
>
> > Hi Dan
> >
> > Personally I dont use <abbr> tags, I always expand the abbreviation
> > or acronym the first instance on a page and I have JAWS set to ignore
> > them. I just dont consider it that important but I'm willing to
> > listen to counter arguments.
> >
> > cheers
> >
> > Geof
> >
> > At 11:02 AM 5/26/2010, you wrote:
> >> Apologies if this has been discussed ad nauseam already.
> >>
> >> I know Jared has said in the past that WebAIM has shifted away from
> >> abbreviating from abbreviating common terms like HTML. I've considered
> >> this -- I expand things like PDF and etc, which probably do more harm
> >> than good -- but haven't actually changed anything yet, as our grant is
> >> nearly up and I plan on doing a site revamp if/when we're refunded.
> >>
> >> I'm being forced to confront the issue now, though, as I'm formatting a
> >> long article on HIV/AIDS, and I think having the text 'Human
> >> Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome' repeated at
> >> least once a paragraph would get wordy (and confusing) very quickly.
> >>
> >> So: is this something I should just let slide without a tag? Should I
> >> give them plain <abbr> tags? I don't know how screen readers would
> >> approach it, or if people are used to hearing 'hiv' pronounced and can
> >> auto-correct it in their head.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Dan Conley
> >> Information Specialist
> >> Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and
> >> Exchange (CIRRIE)
> >> University at Buffalo, Health Sciences Library B6
> >> Phone: (716) 829-5728
> >> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> >> http://cirrie.buffalo.edu
> >>
> >>