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Re: abbreviations

for

From: John Foliot
Date: May 27, 2010 6:12PM

< <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


And an article about the ADA is about what Chuck?

This is not about insulting anyone's intelligence, but it is about
ensuring accurate and complete information for all consumers of the data
when required. As I mentioned in a note on this thread yesterday, some
acronyms and abbreviations have become part of our normal language, such
as 'words' like AIDS and HIV. However it is not always as clear cut, and
it is incumbent on the content producer to remove ambiguities whenever
possible. Again, as a general rule of thumb, when *I* am not sure I turn
to Wikipedia and Miriam-Webster: if they have dedicated entries to the
term (as both do for AIDS) then I let it slide; however if Wikipedia has a
disambiguation page (as they do for ADA -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada), then I ensure that the <abbr> element
is used. That is neither insulting nor paternal, it is due diligence and
appropriateness.

JF

(BTW, I was thinking of the American Diabetes Association -
http://www.diabetes.org - in my first sentence...)