[whatwg] On using abbr with no title and screen readers

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Wed Feb 1 12:30:22 PST 2012


On Tue, 20 Dec 2011, Jorge wrote:
>
> I am trying to make myself clear on how and when to use abbr, if at all, 
> specifically when it does not need expansion and hence does not a title 
> attribute.

If you don't need expansion, then the only reason to use <abbr> is to have 
a styling hook (e.g. if you want to make your abbreviations small caps, or 
want to change how a speech browser reads out the abbreviation -- both of 
these would be controlled either via CSS, or by the browsers' default or 
user settings, or in heuristics similar to those you described).

I haven't updated the spec on this matter; please let me know if you think 
the spec could be clarified in a helpful way here.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'


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