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Re: [EXTERNAL]Spell out "Q&A"

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Apr 6, 2018 9:16AM

I remember going for a job interview for programming and told the guy
I had a lot of experience with 'C number'. (screen readers read the
hashtag, '#' symbols as 'number).
The guydidn't understand what I was talking about for awhile, #blindMoment.
As to your question,Jared put it well. In general, if an abbreviation
has become better known than the expanded form (e.g. "CIA" "FBI" or
"ATM") use it over the expanded form, for all users.
Then there are the cases of the short form and the long form being
equally well known, such as NYC or FAQ. Well, if you can use less
text, use it, you could code it in an <abbr> tag with the title
attribute containing the expanded form if you think it will help you
users, hint, it will not help screenreader users but it might help
users with cognitive impairments.

Then there are the acronyms and abbreviations you know well but your
audience doesn't.
For those, you should spell them out in context the first time you use
them, e.g. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and then code
them as an abbreviation, optionally with the expanded form, for all
subsequent occurances on the page.

The only screen reader thing I can think of off the top of my head is
"do not writ text withall all upper case letters for emphasis".
Some screen readers will spell out the words when written in all upper
case, so phrases such as SITUATIONS THAT REQUIRE EXTRA ATTENTION can
get awfully confusing for a screen reader user. Use CSS, the <em>
element, or the <strong> elements to provide the visual effect you are
going for, don't change the text.

Also, congrats, I am happy that my old college, Yale, (I am a 2002
graduate) finally got their accessibility lead!

-B






On 4/6/18, Steve Green < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> That is a heuristic that will vary from screen reader to screen reader. I
> would not usually worry about that level of detail unless there are specific
> constructions that I know behave badly or if people have problems in user
> testing. It will definitely read as expected if you include spaces, but if
> you exclude them you can't tell what will happen.
>
> Steve
>
>