The intent of this Success Criterion is to ensure that users can access the expanded form of abbreviations.
This Success Criterion may help people who:
Abbreviations may confuse some readers in different ways:
It would also help people with visual disabilities who:
An abbreviation whose expansion is provided the first time the abbreviation appears in the content.
The name, "World Wide Web Consortium," appears as the first heading on the organization's home page. The abbreviation, "W3C," is enclosed in parentheses in the same heading.
A dictionary search form.
A Web site includes a search form provided by an on-line acronym service. Users enter an acronym and the form returns a list of possible expansions from the sources that it searched.
A medical Web site.
A medical Web site provides information for both doctors and patients. The site includes a set of cascading dictionaries; a very specialized medical dictionary is first, followed by a second medical dictionary for the general public. The cascade also includes a list of acronyms and abbreviations that are unique to the site, and finally there is a standard dictionary as well. The standard dictionary at the end of the list provides definitions for most words in the text. The specialized medical dictionary yields definitions of unusual medical terms. Definitions for words that appear in more than one dictionary are listed in the order of the cascade. The meaning of acronyms and abbreviations is provided by the list of acronyms and abbreviations.
Expanded forms of Abbreviations.
The expanded form of each abbreviation is available in a programmatically determinable manner. User agents that speak the text can use the expanded form to announce the abbreviation. Other user agents might make the expanded form available as a tooltip or as contextual help for the abbreviation.
Providing the expansion or explanation of an abbreviation for the first occurrence of the abbreviation in a Web page using one of the following techniques:
Providing the expansion or explanation of an abbreviation for all occurrences of the abbreviation in a Web page using one of the following techniques:
Providing the expansion or explanation of an abbreviation for all occurrences of abbreviations in a Web page using one of the following techniques: