Re: Issue #1099 (where acronym are ambiguous...)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <bugzilla@webby.trace.wisc.edu>
To: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 6:52 AM
Subject: NEW: Issue #1099



[This e-mail has been automatically generated. The following NEW issue
was added
to Bugzilla earlier today.]

  Acronyms cannot always be expanded programmatically.
    -> http://trace.wisc.edu/bugzilla_wcag/show_bug.cgi?id=1099

Roberto Scano:
Is also impossible to give a correct definition. Try to search a simple
acronym in www.acronymfinder.com - for eg. CMS.

Also there is another problem. With the same example, if i have in a
page a description of CMS (Content Management System) and I have to
expand the acronym, the first sentence is (remember that I'm italian so
i need to change language):

<acronym xml:lang="en" title="Content Management System">CMS</acronym>

and the following sentence will only referred as:

<acronym xml:lang="en">CMS</acronym>

Then, if in the same page I spoke about Microsoft CMS, i need to add
another acronym like this:

<acronym xml:lang="en" title="Content Management Server">CMS</acronym>

At this point, if I follow a discussion and i have another "CMS"
acronym, how can programmatically refer to the correct acronym?

I try to explain well. How can the user (with cognitive disabilities or
also with assistive technologies or also a "normal" user) to know to
what acronym refer the next "CMS".

A solution could be - but isn't available inside the DTD, to refer to
the ID of the "main acronym". Eg.

<acronym id="foo" xml:lang="en" title="Content Management
System">CMS</acronym>

and in the second:

<acronym xxxx="foo" xml:lang="en">CMS</acronym>

where xxxx stays for an attribute that - at now - don't exist (eg:
"ref", ...)

Could this point be discussed eventually for future XHTML versions?

Roberto Scano
IWA/HWG

Received on Wednesday, 29 September 2004 08:21:15 UTC