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Quick tip

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From: Paul Bohman
Date: Mar 9, 2000 6:13PM

Here is a quick tip dealing with abbreviations and acronyms:
Some screen readers will attempt to read acronyms. This is alright as long
as the acronym is pronounced phonetically. The listener may have trouble,
however, if the acronym is not meant to be pronounced the way that it is
spelled. In these cases it may be a good idea to put periods between each of
the letters in the acronym. The abbreviation for Utah State University, for
example, is U.S.U., but without the periods between the letters (USU), some
screen readers will pronounce it as "oosoo". This can be confusing. Not all
screen readers handle the periods exactly as you might like them to, but
they try. For example, the screen reader called JAWS (version 3.5) says
"you, dot, ess, dot, you, period", which isn't exactly what I would like,
but it's at least close.
Just remember to mentally pronounce abbreviations and acronyms to yourself
as you type them into your web pages and put periods between the letters if
necessary.
Paul Bohman
Web Accessibility in Mind (Web-AIM)
www.webaim.org