[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

The web sucks *especially for non visual users* because almost no one follows standards. Is that what you want with ePub?

That's the reality, so you learn to work within the bounds of the tech that's out there.

EPUB (and ebooks) =/= Web =/= Latest/Greatest Web Standards.

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

No, abbr should not be avoided.

[...]

https://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#tech-expand-abbr

W3C #a11y specifies that abbreviations have an expansion of the abbreviation where they first occur, and that *requires* the abbr tag.

Again, there's probably nobody on MobileRead who's written more about Accessibility than I have.

I would recommend using WCAG 2.1 (much nicer site design too):

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickr...iew#principle1

And you can see, there are different "Levels" of recommendations (from A, AA, to AAA).

Many things are "nice to have" and goals to aim for (as the technology permits).

Higher-level important aims (Level A) would be things such as:

• Headings <h1-h6>
• alt text
• color/contrast
• <table>s instead of images of tables
• [...]

Others are very minor (Level AAA), such as abbreviations.

* * *

Another solution to <abbr> itself, if you work directly with authors on books (as you are with the magazine), you can tweak the input and have it built directly into the text:

As the DOJ says...

As the DOJ (Department of Justice) says...

This solution:

• Doesn't rely on mouse-hover
  
  • Remember, many ereaders are also not even touch-devices.
• Works for people who can see/can't see
• Is supported by all Text-to-Speech (even crappier Android readers)
• Is completely readable by everyone
• Works in Print, Ebook, Web, Word/LibreOffice/Notepad, [...]
• [...]

* * *

In the EPUB space itself, there's also KevinH's Access-Aide plugin:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=294900

It can also doublecheck and make sure you have <title> filled (even auto-fill it from the first heading), have alt text, have lang+xml:lang, etc. etc.

And DAISY released ACE (Accessibility Checker). There's a Sigil plugin here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=294678

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

People who use screen readers benefit from it greatly, even when no title attribute is used (in fact the title attribute can be over-used)

Indeed.

I've written about <title> extensively here as well:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=294678

and even something as basic as alt support in EPUB readers is shaky. See the post here:

Accessibility question: TTS and ligatures

But, the key thing is... adding human-readable <title> and alt can only HELP, they won't completely break (as in the case of <abbr>).

Side Note: And I wanted to preemptively tackle this, since we're in the "Font Best Practices" thread. Similar to Vulgar Fractions, don't use the legacy Unicode ligature characters (ff, fi, st, [...])—rely on OpenType support instead (see link above).

Originally Posted by AliceWonder

What the effing point of standards if we are just going to make up our own based upon what some crappy software happens to support?

It's always good to aim for more Accessibility, but again, you have to remember the drawbacks and limitations of the actual tools/readers/technologies out there.

Side Note: Since you're also interested in Accessibility, I would recommend watching many of the talks from Ebookcraft over the years:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv6...Pv9H9-A/videos

And even looks like the ebookcraft 2019 talk "The User's Perspective: Accessibility Features in Action" was given by a blind person.

(Somehow, this year's conference slipped by me, I guess I have a lot more speeches to watch/summarize!)