Re: ABBR and ACRONYM

RAM is an interesting case because there is almost no audience
for which one wishes to speak it as its spelling.  If they don't
know what RAM is, then one needs to say "Random Access Memory" or
"main memory." depending on the context.

Here is a case where CSS2 gives some real help.  There are
speak/spell controls that can be applied to classes of elements,
for example ACRONYM vs. ABBR, and you can introduce a user's
stylesheet coordinated with the screen reader you have.  The
style processing could introduce the spaces between letters in
the case of a known-dumb screen reader.  I don't know if this
style is currently in inventory or not.

I feel that I wouldn't know finally what to suggest to authors
without asking the UI group what their developers saw as the best
way their tools should behave on this point.

Al Gilman

Received on Friday, 30 January 1998 12:05:13 UTC