WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: when acronyms mean nothing

for

From: Holly Marie
Date: Jun 28, 2002 10:17AM


----- Original Message -----
From: "Steffi Rausch" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >



| Does anyone see it working on their screen readers? Connect Outloud
told me
| that it has to be put in their dictionary to work, but I said that
acronym
| is an html tag that should be able to tell the screen reader to
pronounce
| the full title and it is what the W3C recommended for accessibility so
they
| should implement it. But oh well. Does anyone else feel the same way?
Any
| input from disabled persons would be greatly appreciated whether they
feel
| it is a real need or not. So in answer to TjL's question, I guess
acronyms
| really don't have any meaning as they won't work.


Well, to be clearer they don't work for one group or particular users
of some device, however they do work for other users that have access to
the visual display mode, so I think it may still be good to use these
when and where possible.

Not everyone who has accessibility challenges or trouble uses a screen
reader or special devices. Some actually use browsers that do support
more of the latest guidelines or even opera, and for those it may be a
good idea to use the tags when we and where we can.

And on another note:
I am not in a position to need extra accessibility care or focus, but I
find there are times where these options are good for me to use, too.

Example... though I can see and enjoy images, there may be times I would
rather load up many pages without images to get these to load faster and
get to the material quicker. I can see or read the ALTs and if a
particular image draws my attention and I want to stop and look, I can
simply switch to graphic mode.

If I am reading an overly complicated piece of technical data on some
web page and I run into a lot of Acronym and Abbreviation use, It would
be very likely I would hover those terms or or abbreviations to see what
they were. A good example may be a Governmental or Advocate site where
the use of Acronyms/Abbreviations might be high. Also any area of
technical web design or development may use a lot of abbreviations or
acronyms.

So these tools are good for a wide range of users, and because I know
which browsers support which, I do use those browsers because they are
the tools of my work.

I understand others may not be so fortunate, but outside of special
motor situations or screen readers, it appears that most or all browsers
support acronym well enough for a hover, except for NN4x ? and maybe
older versions of IE than 5?

The speak out loud style? not so sure, and would wonder about the cases
where people have CSS off ?

holly



----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/