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Thread: Readability of abreviated terms
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: Surendra Kumar
Date: Tue, Dec 10 2019 11:00PM
Subject: Readability of abreviated terms
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Hi all,
I hope everyone is having a good time.
I've some doubts on how screen readers should pronounce certain abbreviated
terms. For instance, if I write "QA" (Quality Assurance), it will be read as
"Ka" instead of "Q A". Can we take it as an accessibility defect? In my
opinion, we should not, because readability of such abbreviated terms may be
TTS-dependent.
From: Mallory
Date: Wed, Dec 11 2019 3:43AM
Subject: Re: Readability of abreviated terms
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I agree with your opinion, in general.
AT dictionaries tend to set how acronyms and abbreviations are pronounced; some users can change these, but I'm not certain if it's possible to change them in all text-to-speech softwares.
However: if it's an uncommon acronym or abbreviation, it's considered good practice to spell out the full words at least once, the first time the term is used. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/abbreviations.html
I would personally expect "QA" in a professional development, QA or general testing environment to not need this full spell out, however for audiences outside these areas (including managers/execs, content writers, or the general public), it would be good to say once "quality assurance (QA)"...
I would put anyone in training under the "general public" group. A screen reader user just getting started may potentially not run across "QA" as a term before (who knows) and so if there's any standard training docs given out to newbie hires, it would be good to spell out all acronyms and abbreviations at least once, to let these users match however their SR reads to what the term means.
cheers,
Mallory
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, at 7:00 AM, Surendra Kumar wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I hope everyone is having a good time.
>
>
>
> I've some doubts on how screen readers should pronounce certain abbreviated
> terms. For instance, if I write "QA" (Quality Assurance), it will be read as
> "Ka" instead of "Q A". Can we take it as an accessibility defect? In my
> opinion, we should not, because readability of such abbreviated terms may be
> TTS-dependent.
>
> > > > >
From: Maxability A11Y
Date: Wed, Dec 11 2019 4:37AM
Subject: Re: Readability of abreviated terms
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+1 to Mallory..
Regards - Rakesh,
M: 9948243336, E: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Sent from my iPhone
> On 11-Dec-2019, at 4:13 PM, Mallory < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> I agree with your opinion, in general.
>
> AT dictionaries tend to set how acronyms and abbreviations are pronounced; some users can change these, but I'm not certain if it's possible to change them in all text-to-speech softwares.
>
> However: if it's an uncommon acronym or abbreviation, it's considered good practice to spell out the full words at least once, the first time the term is used. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/abbreviations.html
>
> I would personally expect "QA" in a professional development, QA or general testing environment to not need this full spell out, however for audiences outside these areas (including managers/execs, content writers, or the general public), it would be good to say once "quality assurance (QA)"...
>
> I would put anyone in training under the "general public" group. A screen reader user just getting started may potentially not run across "QA" as a term before (who knows) and so if there's any standard training docs given out to newbie hires, it would be good to spell out all acronyms and abbreviations at least once, to let these users match however their SR reads to what the term means.
>
> cheers,
> Mallory
>
>> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, at 7:00 AM, Surendra Kumar wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>>
>>
>> I hope everyone is having a good time.
>>
>>
>>
>> I've some doubts on how screen readers should pronounce certain abbreviated
>> terms. For instance, if I write "QA" (Quality Assurance), it will be read as
>> "Ka" instead of "Q A". Can we take it as an accessibility defect? In my
>> opinion, we should not, because readability of such abbreviated terms may be
>> TTS-dependent.
>>
>> >> >> >> >>
> > > >
From: Swift, Daniel P.
Date: Wed, Dec 11 2019 6:43AM
Subject: Re: Readability of abreviated terms
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General thought, it's a shame that the "abbr" (abbreviation) tag doesn't have a phonetic attribute. How does the abbreviation tag work with screen readers with the title attribute (example: <abbr title="Quality Assurance">QA</abbr>)? Do both the 'title' and text get read or is it just one or the other? I'm assuming a mixed bag across software since the mileage for the title attribute varies...
Dan Swift
Senior Web Specialist
University Communications and Marketing
West Chester University
610.738.0589
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Wed, Dec 11 2019 8:58AM
Subject: Re: Readability of abreviated terms
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Screen readers typically ignore the <abbr> attribute altogether, they
just read its content (or try to pronounce it the best they can).
There is a setting in Jaws that expands abbreviations, NVDA reads the
extended form if you arrow over it and TalkBack reads the extended
form by default.
See this excellent article for more info:
https://www.24a11y.com/2019/taking-accessibility-beyond-compliance/
(scroll down to the abbreviation section)
I also like this article about how you could use CSS content to
provide a screen reader accessible extended form (this is admittedly
hacky and to be used sparingly but it is pretty much the only way to
consistently make the extended form available to screen reader users,
though it doesn't help keyboard only users):v
https://adrianroselli.com/2019/02/f87-css-generated-content-and-wcag-conformance.html
At the end of the day this is a user agent/assistive technology vendor problem.
Butthe the the fact remains that end users always suffer until the
problem is fixed.
On 12/11/19, Swift, Daniel P. < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> General thought, it's a shame that the "abbr" (abbreviation) tag doesn't
> have a phonetic attribute. How does the abbreviation tag work with screen
> readers with the title attribute (example: <abbr title="Quality
> Assurance">QA</abbr>)? Do both the 'title' and text get read or is it just
> one or the other? I'm assuming a mixed bag across software since the
> mileage for the title attribute varies...
>
> Dan Swift
> Senior Web Specialist
> University Communications and Marketing
> West Chester University
> 610.738.0589
>
>