RE: Proposed change to GL 3.1 L3 SC3

Thanks for the proposal, Becky.

I would suggest one small editorial change to clarify the example of an
initialism.

<revised>
initialism - an unpronounceable abbreviation made from the initial
letters 
of a name that contains several words.  Not defined in all languages.
SNCF 
is a French initialism that contains the initial letters of the Societe 
National des Chemins de Fer, the French national railroad. 
</revised>

<current>
initialism - an unpronounceable abbreviation made from the initial
letters 
of a name that contains several words.  Not defined in all languages.
SNCF 
is a French acronym that contains the initial letters of the Societe 
National des Chemins de Fer, the French national railroad. 
</current>

The change I'm proposing is to replace the phrase "SNCF is a French
acronym" to "SNCF is a French initialism..."

Rationale: it might be confusing to use the word "acronym" in an example
showing what an "initialism" is, especially since the definition also
(necessarily) contains the word "abbreviation."

John

"Good design is accessible design."

Dr. John M. Slatin, Director 
Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin 
FAC 248C 
1 University Station G9600 
Austin, TX 78712 
ph 512-495-4288, fax 512-495-4524 
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu 
Web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility 



-----Original Message-----
From: public-wcag-teamb-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-wcag-teamb-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of
Becky_Gibson@notesdev.ibm.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:18 PM
To: public-wcag-teamb@w3.org
Subject: Proposed change to GL 3.1 L3 SC3



At the call today we discussed the proposal to combine L3 SC2 and L3 SC3

of Guideline 3.1 into one single success criteria [1].   The proposal
was 
to add  abbreviations to the L3 SC2 description.   While people still
feel 
that this proposal has merit, we decided to propose only an amendment to

L3 SC3 and leave it as a separate success criteria. Wendy summarized the

reasoning in a posting to the list [2].  For more background see the 
survey from May about removing this SC [3] and the minutes from the 
Brussels Face to Face [4]


The current proposal is to remove the word acronym from the SC text
since 
an acronym is a subset of abbreviation and to provide updated
definitions 
of abbreviation, acronym and initialisms. 
<proposal for GL 3.1 L3 SC3>
A mechanism for finding the expanded form of abbreviations is available.
</proposal>

Based on the lengthy discussions on the list the following definitions
are 
proposed.
<proposed definitions>
abbreviation -The shortened form of a word.  For example, "est." may be 
the abbreviation for the English words "established" or "estimate."
"Cie" 
is the abbreviation for the French word "compagnie" (company). 
Note: Acronyms and initialisms are types of abbreviations.

acronym -  An abbreviation made from the initial letters of a name that 
contains several words. Defined differently in different languages.  For

example, NOAA is an abbreviation made from the initial letters of the 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States.

initialism - an unpronounceable abbreviation made from the initial
letters 
of a name that contains several words.  Not defined in all languages.
SNCF 
is a French acronym that contains the initial letters of the Societe 
National des Chemins de Fer, the French national railroad. 
</proposed definitions>

The definition of abbreviation is not changed from my original proposal 
except for the addition of the note.  I did not know how to incorporate 
Christophe's two part definition from [5] since it did not seem 
appropriate to use the word "abbreviated" in the definition of 
"abbreviation".  The definition of acronym was  changed to state that it

is defined differently in different languages and I replace the term 
"word" with abbreviation.   I added a definition for initialisms.

Does this capture the issues from the discussions on the list?  Please 
comment as soon as possible as I would like to pose this to the larger 
list for discussion at the Thursday, September 22,  working group
meeting. 


thanks,
-becky

[1] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wcag-teamb/2005Sep/0089.html
[2] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wcag-teamb/2005Sep/0135.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35422/meaning0508/results
[4] http://www.w3.org/2005/06/14-wai-wcag-minutes.html#item01
[5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2005JulSep/0847.html

Becky Gibson
Web Accessibility Architect
                                                       
IBM Emerging Internet Technologies
5 Technology Park Drive
Westford, MA 01886
Voice: 978 399-6101; t/l 333-6101
Email: gibsonb@us.ibm.com

Received on Wednesday, 21 September 2005 19:58:57 UTC