WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Handling Acronyms and Abbreviations

for

From: Daren
Date: Mar 10, 2000 10:00AM


I used the strategy of putting periods between letters on the CECSEP
site (C.E.C.S.E.P.), but Cyndi didn't like how it looked (I don't blame
her) and asked me to take them out. I told her why I'd done that and how
screen readers mishandle acronyms, but now I'm now searching for an
alternative way of marking up the acronyms and abbreviations so that
screen readers will handle them correctly. I found some info on the
<Acronym> and <Abbr> tags at the W3C site.
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/text.html#edef-ABBR
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to do the stuff with style sheets that
they are asking. The Lie and Bos book doesn't cover it.
Also, I didn't see anything that could be used in aural style sheets
except for the 'speak' property and 'spell-out' value. No example on
that page to really show how it should be applied. You might be able to
figure it out though. Here's the page:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-css2/aural.html#aural

I'll continue to pursue this and see what else I can find out.
Daren