WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Keyboard accessibility of abbreviations

for

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Apr 16, 2015 9:53AM

On Thu, 16 Apr 2015, <EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:

> 1) It's impossible to outrule human error; someone can always forget to mention the expanded form once, maybe because it's common in their field but not for the occasional layman looking for information.

True, and usually I am all about "give everything to the keyboard only users."

But in all cases, be aware of what limits to the acronym expansion are provided to the users without disabilities, as well. If the text corresponds to anything which is also provided as printouts, then readers of the paper version also don't have access to the expanded acronym beyond the first, explicit expansion. The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) followed by "W3C" example is ubiquitous in print publishing. Online, I suspect (though I have no evidence) most sighted users are unlikely to click on acronym expansions even if they don't know their meaning.

And of course, while you're talking about jargony medical terms, it's also important not to get hung up on NASA, sonar, WWW, etc,or all of the other acronyms which most people know by acronym and rarely by expension.

So it sounds like you're doing the right thing here, with a very specific medical jargon set! But remember that there are appropriate cases not to expand.

Deborah Kaplan