Concept of "equivalence" as used in guidelines

In his treatment of guideline 5, Eric proposed to extend the concept of
"equivalence" to encompass expansions of acronyms and abbreviations. I
would caution against making such a change. The notion of an "equivalent" 
should be carefully restricted to the case of multimedia content. The
TITLE attribute of the ACRONYM and ABBR elements does not offer an
"equivalent" to the acronym or abbreviation, but rather an expansion
thereof, which may be rendered specially by user agents, but not
necessarily as a substitute, in the sense of an equivalent, for the text
of the abbreviation or acronym. For instance, a speaking browser could
read the expansion (as given in the TITLE attribute) using a different
voice, after the text of the abbreviation or acronym. The latter could,
alternatively, be treated as a link to the expansion. The general
point is that the relationship of acronym/abbreviation to its expansion
should not be regarded as one of equivalence.

Received on Saturday, 17 April 1999 22:26:47 UTC