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Analyzing <abbr> solutions

for

From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Mar 23, 2006 11:30AM

On 3/23/06, Penny Roberts < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>
> However, I am one of the x% of people who would have been dyslexic
> had
> I not developed coping strategies very early on. I have a very poor
> memory for some things (like acronyms!): is that attributable to the
> brain patterns/links that cause dyslexia? I don't know. [Memory
> malfunction is a facet of dyslexia for some sufferers.]
> [...]
> Anyone with impaired memory through age, stroke etc.. People with motor
> disabilities? Using an assistive device which is voice activated or
> controlled by limited physical motion or by mouth might find it
> fatiguing to seek out the first instance of the acronym (and equally
> fatiguing working through the additional text if it were written in full
> every time). Possibly some forms of dyslexia.


Ah, there you go -- finally a discussion of what users with disabilities
benefit from <abbr>. I am glad to see this discussed.

So we have:

1. People with various cognitive impairments may benefit from being able to
expand an acronym or abbreviatioin.

2. People who might have problems navigating a document easily may not be
able to easily find the acronym or abbreviation.

These are likely valid (although we'd need actual concrete data on user
patterns to determine if these really represent user scenarios that happen),
so the next question becomes "how do we address these?"

Using the screenreader example, this may be case of user agent support. A
browser might be able to identify a fragment as being an acronym if it's
defined once with <abbr>, and then provide a link back to it on demand. A
decent searching function could address 2, especially if there is a
jump-back-to-where-I-was function.

Large problems can result when the expectation is that all acronyms and
abbreviations must be provided with expanded forms via <abbr>, including the
fact that it greatly increases the size of the text.

Consider the following:

"Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a language created by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) for use with HTML and XML documents. The W3C's current
recommendation is CSS level 2, although they've published a draft for CSS
2.1. You can read more about CSS at the W3C's web site."

This is not an unreasonable paragraph to write; the acronyms CSS and W3C are
expanded (in normal English text) on first appearance as they're likely not
familiar to the target audience of the paragraph -- since the purpose of the
paragraph is to explain what CSS is. HTML and XML are presumed to be
familiar enough that they're not spelled out.

Total characters (without links): 275

Here's a version with <abbr> used every time:

"<abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr> is a language created by
the <abbr title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</abbr> for use with <abbr
title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr> and <abbr title="eXtensible
Markup Language">XML</abbr> documents. The <abbr title="World Wide Web
Consortium">W3C</abbr>'s current recommendation is <abbr title="Cascading
Style Sheets">CSS</abbr> level 2, although they've published a draft for
<abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr> 2.1. You can read more about
<abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr> at the <abbr title="World
Wide Web Consortium">W3C</abbr>'s web site."

Total characters: 635

Note that in this case, the <abbr> substitutes for the normal English
parenthetical expansions of CSS and W3C -- since we're required to use
<abbr> and not required to expand it in text (which, IMO, is a serious
writing flaw), there's a disincentive to add an extra 54 characters
(bringing the total to 689).

I'd suggest that a better rule than "expand all abbreviated forms with
<abbr>" is "provide expanded versions on first appearance of unfamiliar
abbreviated forms with <abbr title>, AND mark subsequent appearances of the
abbreviated forms with <abbr> (with no title)."

This would allow user agents to track which abbreviated forms have been
expanded and provide tooltips for each if desired, but not require redundant
and repetitive markup for subsequent appearances. Example:

"<abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr> is a language created by
the <abbr title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</abbr> for use with HTML and
XML documents. The <abbr>W3C</abbr>'s current recommendation is
<abbr>CSS</abbr> level 2, although they've published a draft for
<abbr>CSS</abbr> 2.1. You can read more about <abbr>CSS</abbr> at the
<abbr>W3C</abbr>'s web site."

Total Characters: 379

To this text (but not the preceeding) you can apply a simple CSS rule:

abbr[title]:before { content: attr(title) " ("; }
abbr[title]:after { content: ")"; }

With such a rule applied, the text above is identical, when shown in a
reasonable browser, to the original version (with the English, non-markup
expansion).

(This won't work if you use <abbr title> on every occurence, though.)

Thoughts?

--Kynn