- From: Patrick Lauke <P.H.Lauke@salford.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 16:40:38 -0000
- To: "wai-ig" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Eadie, David > Whilst some authors would not include an expansion > for commonly-used acronyms/abbreviations one might > question their ability to decide what is common and > understood by all. It might be the case that a common > abbreviation whose meaning is understood by a web > developer is not understood by a user who suffers > from, for example, a learning or age-related impairment. A valid point, but the original question really is: should you use mark up an acronym/abbreviation with its expanded Version if the expanded version is already adjacent to it. It would be my view that no, that's superfluous. > ask whether or not you should use an ABBR element for all > occurences of an abbreviation in a web page. Keep in mind that Internet Explorer does not support ABBR... > Users who > suffer from a learning or age-related impairment might benefit > from such a strategy; as might someone who, as a result of the > website's navigation strategy, has been allowed to link to the > middle of a web page's content thus missing the first expanded > form of the abbreviation. Exactly. As the web is not a purely linear medium, and that pages may not necessarily be read in full (e.g. a screen reader user getting an overview of headings, then jumping to the relevant heading and reading from there), it's difficult to pin down the "first occurrence" of an abbreviation/acronym. I'd say it comes down to consistency: decide which acronyms/abbreviations need to be marked up as such (e.g. on a page aimed at politics students relating to USA's foreign policy, should every single occurrence of USA be marked up, or would it be reasonable to expect - depending on target audience, of course - that it's a familiar acronym that does not require marking up) and then be consistent throughout the rest of the page/site. Patrick ________________________________ Patrick H. Lauke Web Editor / University of Salford http://www.salford.ac.uk ________________________________ Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ ________________________________
Received on Tuesday, 22 November 2005 16:51:01 UTC