WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: abbreviations

for

From: Denis Boudreau
Date: May 27, 2010 4:42PM

Chuck,

You are missing the point. It's not a matter of assuming that blind
people wouldn't know what sighted people would. It's a matter of
making sure that all users have a fair chance of understanding what an
acronym or abbreviation actually means.

Not all abreviations and acronyms are widely known. For instance can
you tell me what MDEIE means? Or SGQRI for that matter? Google will or
might tell you, but no users should have to resort to a search engine
to understand what any page or piece of content is talking about.

If anything, it's more a matter of making sure that people dealing
with cognitive limitations would understand as well (or at the very
least, that they'd have a fair chance at understanding).

No one implied anything about screen reader users. That is besides the
point. If anything, all we said was that for users with visual
disabilities, extra care had to be taken so the tools they are using
would also be able to interpret whatever signification was provided
through the mechanism put in place.

/Denis

Sent from my iPhone.


On 2010-05-27, at 17:19, < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> This is ridiculous. All professional articles use standard
> abbreviations and
> acronyms such as HIV. As a blind person with a master's degree and
> additional advanced training to think that a person relying on
> accessibility
> with screen readers or other accessibility tools would not be aware of
> accepted societal abbreviations is insulting. This goes way beyond
> concepts
> of accessibility and reasonable accommodation. I don't know where this
> originally came from but a reader of an article or visitor to a web
> site
> that relies on accessibility tools may have a disability but
> stupidity is
> not a disability that needs to be accommodated when making the
> internet
> accessible.
> Chuck
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dan Conley" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 8:02 AM
> Subject: [WebAIM] abbreviations
>
>
>> 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
>>
>>