Ready for use or service; usable
NOTE: [Note: The baseline impact analysis for guidelines and SC recommended that the phrase "is available]" be used in this and a number of other SC as a way to describe a "functional outcome." I am concerned that the phrase is vague and subject to intentional misinterpretation—e.g., a mechanism is available but we didn’t implement it." To avoid this, we may want to consider changing "mechanism is available" to something like "mechanism has been implemented" or "is available to the user."]
Shortened form of a word, phrase or name, i.e. a general category that includes abbreviations, initialisms and acronyms.
An abbreviation made from the initial letters of a name or phrase that contains several words. Many acronyms can be pronounced as 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.
The shortened form of a name or phrase made from the initial letters of words or syllables contained in that name or phrase. 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. ESP is an initialism for extrasensory perception.
The intent of this success criterion is to ensure that users can
access the expanded form of abbreviations.
The following combinations of techniques are deemed to be sufficient
by
the WCAG Working Group for meeting success criterion 3.1 L3 SC3.
Providing the expansion of abbreviations using a technology-specific technique listed below AND one of the following:
The following are common mistakes which are considered failures of this success criterion by the working group.
Although not required for conformance, the following additional techniques should be considered in order to make content more accessible. Not all techniques can be used or would be effective in all situations.
This success criterion helps people whose disabilities make reading difficult or impossible. These include:
People with learning disabilities or cognitive limitations that impair the ability to read
People with low vision. Screen magnification may reduce contextual cues.
People with memory loss This success criterion also helps people with disabilities that affect their ability to recognize words as well as their ability to use context to aid understanding. Acronyms and abbreviations may confuse these readers in different ways:
Some abbreviations do not look like normal words and cannot be pronounced according to the usual rules of the language. For example, the English word "room" is abbreviated as "rm," which does not correspond to any English word or phoneme. The user has to know that "rm" is an abbreviation for the word "room" in order to say it correctly.
Sometimes the same abbreviation means different things in different contexts. For example, in the English sentence "Dr. Johnson lives on Boswell Dr.," the first "Dr." is an abbreviation for "Doctor" and the second instance is an abbreviation for the word "Drive" (a word that means "street"). Users must be able to understand the context in order to know what the abbreviations mean.
Some acronyms spell common words, but are used in different ways. For example, "JAWS" is an acronym for a screen reader whose full name is "Job Access with Speech." It is also a common English word referring to the part of the mouth that holds the teeth. The acronym is used differently than the common word.
Some acronyms sound like common words but are spelled differently. For example, the acronym for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, S M I L, is pronounced like the English word "smile."
Example 1: A dictionary search form.
A Web site includes a search form provided by an online acronym service. Users enter an acronym and the form returns a list of possible expansions from the sources that it searched.
Example 2: A medical Web site.
A medical website provides information for both doctors and patients. The site includes a set of cascading dictionaries. A very specialized medical dictionary is first, followed by a second medical dictionary for the general public. The cascade also includes a list of acronyms and abbreviations that are unique to the site, and finally there is a standard dictionary as well. The standard dictionary at the end of the list provides definitions for most words in the text. The specialized medical dictionary yields definitions of unusual medical terms. Definitions for words that appear in more than one dictionary are listed in the order of the cascade. The meaning of acronyms and abbreviations is provided by the list of acronyms and abbreviations.
Example 3: An abbreviation whose expansion is provided the first time the abbreviation appears in the content.
The name, World Wide Web Consortium," appears as the first heading on the organization’s home page. The abbreviation, "W3C," is enclosed in parentheses in the same heading.