[thelist] Use of <abbr title>

Madhu Menon webguru at vsnl.net
Fri Mar 15 11:20:01 CST 2002


At 08:19 PM 3/15/2002, Andrew H. wrote:

(Getting back to the topic...)

>Speech-readers will probably read the title attribute, so would you code
>
><acronym title="Portable Network Graphic">PNG</acronym>
>
>or
>
><acronym title="ping">PNG</acronym> ?


This is an interesting issue. Is the use of the <acronym> tag primarily
aimed towards blind users? If so, I believe that pronouncing the expansion
of the acronym would be aurally annoying. For example, take the following text:

--

The <acronym title="Graphics Interchange Format">GIF</acronym> format
allows only 256 colours, while <acronym title="Joint Photographic Experts
Group">JPEG files</acronym> can have up to 16.7 million.

--

If the screen reader did read the title attribute, the blind user would
hear the text like this:

--

The Graphics Interchange Format GIF format allows only 256 colours, while
Joint Photographic Experts Group JPEG files can have up to 16.7 million.

--

That doesn't sound so good, does it? Of course, I don't know much about
screen readers (they don't exist in this part of the world) and I assume
Andrew H is right about how screen readers treat the <acronym> tag.

Regards,

Madhu

<<<   *   >>>
Madhu Menon
User Experience Consultant
e-mail: webguru at vsnl.net




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