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Re: abbreviations

for

From: Denis Boudreau
Date: May 26, 2010 3:48PM

Hi again,

On 2010-05-26, at 4:18 PM, John Foliot wrote:

>>> It means that Jaws will NOT support the @title in <abbr> and <acronym>.
>
> It means nothing of the sort. It is simply a user setting that can be
> adjusted in a particular piece of software, and what JAWS does versus what
> NVDA does (versus what Voiceover does, and HAL, and WindowEyes, and...) is
> already a hugely different kettle of fish. Again, developing for a piece
> of software or a specific device is the wrong way forward - develop to the
> standards and let the software/end user make the choice of how and what
> they will consume your information.

Sorry, what I meant to say was that Jaws will not support @title by default since it's configured to support @alt instead.

Of course, I agree with you that we should not develop according to tools, but according to standards. I've been advocating in that sense forl onger than I care to admit. But as much as I'd like everything to fit perfectly into place, sometimes we have no choice but to take into account the limitations of those tools if we want to reach the targeted audience.

Screen readers might - and do - deal with stuff differently (as they should, since they're more business-driven than standards compliancy driven), but just like for certain browsers, what the most popular does or prefers is what we have to deal with. It'S always been that way and probably partially ever will be.

I could decide to use only <abbr title=""> or <acronym title=""> because it's the "right" thing to do, but if 70% of users can't get the info because Jaws decided on certain default settings, I am not helping the people I do this for in the first place.


>>> I stand with what I was saying earlier: 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. Seems like the best option to me, a win-win situation
>>> for everyone.
>
> This is not a wrong strategy, but it is not a complete strategy either
> (IMHO)

If you mean to say that we should do something like this, then I can certianly agree with you:

...blah blah blah <acronym title="North Atlantic Treaty Organisation">NATO</acronym> (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) ...blah blah blah.

I could buy into this, but it still seems kind of overkill (and potentially redundant for some) to me.


--
Denis Boudreau
www.twitter.com/dboudreau