[html4all] ACRONYM and ABBR

[Leif Halvard Silli]

Jason White 24-04-2008 06:06:   ­  
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 05:43:46AM +0200, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
> > What do the AT professionals of our group think in general about the 
> > removal of ACRONYM from HTML, as proposed in HTML 5?
> > 
>
> It would be better to have only one element, as then the interminable
> disagreements and confusions surrounding the acronym/abbreviation distinction
> are eliminated.
>   

True.

> > Currently, it is proposed to drop the requirement of @TITLE for the ABBR 
> > element. 
>
> While I think @title should be supported, I am not convinced that its use
> should be mandatory - that it should be a required attribute. According to the
> HTML 4.01 DTD, it is not required; rather, it is #implied.
>   

Then you agree with the current draft, which makes @title optional.  I 
cannot see from HTML 4.01, however, that @title is #implied.

> Dropping @title altogether from ABBR would be a bad move, as there would then
> be no place to record the expansion of the abbreviation.
>   

One view is that no @title means that the abbreviaiton is an acronym. [1]

However, when I tested VoiceOver and Fire Vox, it turned out that 
ACRONYM and ABBR elements were read the same way. Thus, NATO was read 
Enn,Ay,Tee,Oh.

Which leads me to assume that acronyms are not read as acronyms anyhow, 
and thus AT users are happy with acronyms being marked up as ABBR. Right?

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Apr/0725.html
-- 
leif halvard silli