Re: About ABBR

What an interesting thread...

Kynn Bartlett wrote:
> Do you see my point here?  By relying on a poorly supported set of
> tags such as ABBR and ACRONYM, we may be actually -decreasing- the
> accessibility of our page.

The point is well proclaimed.  Why, then, can we not do/request/require
both and call it a compromise?

>       The Web Accessibility Initiative
>       (<ACRONYM TITLE="Web Accessibility Initiative">WAI</ACRONYM>)
>...
>       The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is part of the World
>       Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

One can easily prove that the first is more accessible.  The first
example sets a precedence for the entire document.  It even eludes that
parantheses are used to indicate manually expanded acronyms in this
author's culture.  The first points out blatantly that we are dealing
with an acronym here.  No assumptions must be made as it's clear and
concise.  Who does it say this to?  Anyone intelligent enough to
question it.  They cannot be considered equally accessible without
blatant disregard to wide-spread comprehension.
 
> If you think the first example is more accessible -- why, how, and
> to whom?  If you think they're equally accessible, doesn't that
> mean that the markup is a waste of time, energy, space, and bandwidth?

>       <ACRONYM TITLE="Web Accessibility Initiative">WAI</ACRONYM>
>       is part of the
>       <ABBR TITLE="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</ABBR>.
> 
> I maintain that this is the -least- accessible of the three exhibits --

Right here, right now, the accessibility of this is questionable.  I
would likely (and often do) avoid this in favor of a combination of
manual expansion and inclusion of acronym markup on, at least, the first
instance of a term.

-- 
,David Norris
  Open Server Architecture Project - http://www.opensa.org/
  Dave's Web - http://www.webaugur.com/dave/
  ICQ Universal Internet Number - 412039
  E-Mail - dave@webaugur.com

Received on Saturday, 19 February 2000 23:40:27 UTC