Creating Accessible Web Sites

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Abbreviations

In general screen readers do not recognize abbreviations and acronyms and generally read them as if they were typical English words. For instance the phrase "ITS at PSU" would not be read by screen readers as the intended "I.T.S. at P.S.U.", but as "It's at Sue". Here are some workarounds to help deal with this issue.

Synopsis

Using periods between letters (e.g. P.S.U. versus PSU) in an acronym may help screen readers parse the acronym.
When writing ALT tags with acronyms, add spaces between characters (e.g. <alt="P S U" >).
For unusual abbreviations and acronyms, you can supply a key for what they mean.
You can include an ACRONYM tag for abbreviations, which also causes a tooltip to appear in modern browsers.

Examples ACRONYM tag

Rollover text after "Test" to see a tooltip.

<acronym title="Pennsylvania">PA</acronymn>
Test: PA

<acronym title="H T M L">HTML</acronym>
Test: HTML

<acronym title="sodium chloride">NaCl</acronym>
Test: NaCl

What Screen Readers Say

Without the acronymn tags, the screen reader would say "Pah, Hitmill, nackle"
With these tags, the screen reader would say "Pennsylvania, H T M L, sodium chloride."

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