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RE: ABBR vs. just spelling it out.

for

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Mar 23, 2006 8:30AM

If you all don't mind, I would like to share my limited observations on
abbreviations. I will admit that these observations are limited to
people who are blind.

Where I work we have an abbreviation and acronym rich environment. If
someone can turn it into an acronym or abbreviation, they will. In
fact, we have acronyms and abbreviations that look the same but stand
for something different depending on the context. It seems as long as
the person who is blind has heard the acronym once or twice, the the
individual seems to understand what the acronym or abbreviation stands
for.

During the past several years I have worked on accessibility, I can only
recall once where use of acronyms and abbreviations caused noticeable
problems for users who are blind. It was an application that displayed
an employee's paycheck information. However it appeared that even
people without disabilities were having difficulty figuring out those
acronyms and abbreviations.

It makes me suspect that abbreviations and acronyms do not create
additional accessibility problems for people who are blind or have low
vision. If abbreviations and acronyms do cause problems, they are the
type of problems that users without disabilities have.

It would be fantastic if we had good data to base our opinions
on--particularly, if we could include additional groups of people with
different kinds of disabilities.

While I enjoy discussing the various approaches for solving
accessibility problems with my colleagues, it would be nice if we
actually had quantifiable data to argue over.

Does anyone know of anyone who is doing some good solid research on
these kind of topics?

Thanks,
Tim
>From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of
>Penny Roberts
>Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 4:43 AM
>To: WebAIM Discussion List
>Subject: Re: [WebAIM] ABBR vs. just spelling it out.
>
>Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>
>> There's only disappointment because you're going out of your way to
>> find it. You're misinterpreting what I've said and I've never once
>> called for a focus on blind folks to the detriment of other groups.
>
>Maybe not intentionally but that is certainly how your
>responses to this thread have come over. I mentioned
>bothreading and hearing and you narrowed it down to "blind folks".
>
>> Developers should understand how the user agents function.
>I've heard
>> one person (in this thread) say that the need for <abbr> is because
>> blind people can't easily go back and find the expanded version.
>
>If you are going to quote me at least get it right: what I
>actually said was that expecting a blind person to go back to
>the beginning to find the expanded version was equally as bad
>as making them hear it in full (which referred to your
>suggestion of not abbreviating). Neither situation is good.
>
>Penny
>
>
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