Nicholas Shanks wrote:
On Mon, 21 Apr 2008, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
>
> Assistive technology is certainly a valid use case here.
Why? It doesn't seem to be the case to me that people using ATs are any
less able to work out what an abbreviation is than anyone else.
I think the point is that written and spoken language are not the same.
If I see "etc." written down, I read it as "et cetera" in my mind's
voice, sometimes even as "blah blah blah"!
This usage has nothing to do with disambiguation, and is only
concerned with text-to-speech (even if that speech is unspoken). As
such, these kinds of abbreviations should not be marked up IMO, but
left to the synthesizer's lexicon.
How is this concerned with text to speech exactly? To my knowledge, the
use of abbr elements has no bearing at all as to how an abbreviation is
spoken by a screen reader. The main point is to provide the expanded
form, and to all users.
Jon
--
dotjay / Jon Gibbins
w: dotjay.co.uk
