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<abbr> vs <acronym>

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From: Rob Schumann
Date: Aug 13, 2003 10:02PM

Hi,

I have a quick question regarding 'correct' usage of the above two tags, in particular the way in which they get handled by audio browsers.

Examples of use I've seen suggest the following:

<abbr> to be used for shortenings of phrases/words (e.g. 'Herts' for 'Hertfordshire') and for initialisms such as 'HTML'.

<acronym> to be used for the set of initialisms that can themselves be pronounced as words, for example, 'NASA'.

I don't have access to any audio means of browsing, so hopefully someone can educate me a little.

Within screen readers and the like, does the text bounded by these tags ever get read aloud, or only ever the full expansion contained in the title attribute?

If the bounded text does get read aloud then my guess is that <abbr> gets read as a pronouncable word (or tries), while <acronym> would get spelt out. If that is the case then the proposed application for initialisms outlined above should be reversed, with 'NASA' as an <abbr> and 'HTML' as an <acronym>... unless of course <acronyms> are _always_ pronounced, while <abbr>'s will be pronounced if possible, otherwise spelt out.

My question really boils down to how audio access methods handle the rendering of these two tags.

Thanks in advance.

Rob


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