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I find it ironic that in order for your comment to be accessible the reader must lookup “a11y” to find that it means “accessibility”.
by rubyfan 3y ago
I find it ironic that in order for your comment to be accessible the reader must lookup “a11y” to find that it means “accessibility”.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y agoRelatedly, "i18n" is hard for non-native speakers to understand too, how ironically apt.
- accoil 3y agoIt's hard for native speakers too. Numerical contractions aren't part of normal English (i.e they don't seem to exist outside of IT).
- Kerrick 3y agoNumerical ones don’t seem to exist outside of IT, but other fields do the same strategy of abbreviating common long words by keeping only a letter or two. The non-numerical way is to just replace the rest with an “x” like “txn” for “transaction” in finance or “pax” for “passengers” in transportation or “sx” for “symptoms” in medicine.
- accoil 3y agoNeat, that's one mystery solved. I have seen "x" used like that, but didn't know how it worked.
- ryokeken 3y agonative speaker of assembly language?
- worik 3y agoI have dreamt in VAX assembly
- DaiPlusPlus 3y agoIs it still okay to make "nothing sucks like a VAX" jokes? (I kid, I think VMS has a better design than Linux)
- worik 3y ago> Is it still okay to make "nothing sucks like a VAX" jokes? Please! I was a stage II CS student learning assembly programming on a VAX simulator. Wrote a VAX simulator, in VAX assembly then ran VAX assembly programmes on it. Was a lot of fun. The dreams were weird tho
- demyinn 3y agoThis is so funny because I read the parent post, looked up "a11y", and then read your response. Had a pretty good laugh.
- thisgoesnowhere 3y agoThat's like saying you shouldn't use slang because people have to look it up.
- rubyfan 3y agoWhen speaking to diverse stakeholders I will not use acronyms, slang, colloquialism, or jargon because I want to be accessible.
- Hizonner 3y ago"Stakeholder" is jargon.
- antiterra 3y agoIt’s far more literal than others, re people having a stake in something.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Izkata 3y agoLike Buffy the Vampire Slayer! (Now just wait for that to pop into your head at the next work meeting)
- kps 3y agoWhenever I hear ‘stakeholder’ I assume someone is about to be stabbed through the heart. I've never been wrong.
- thisgoesnowhere 3y agoOk good to know
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- amanzi 3y agoFirst time hearing the term a11y for me too. I hope to never come across it again.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eep_social 3y agoWait till you hear about k8s and o11y.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tom_ 3y agoI claim your time would be better spent figuring out why it makes you unhappy and working out how to not mind it - this is a somewhat common means of abbreviation, and you'll probably encounter it again.
- worik 3y agoI have not seen it in the thirty five years since I learnt what FAQ meant
- yen223 3y agoIt's interesting to me how almost nobody uses the `<first letter><number of letters><last letter>` (i18n, a11y, etc) convention anymore. I guess ubiquitous autocomplete has made that convention redundant.
- ryokeken 3y agoduuuuuude for real a11y? what kind of weird lingo flex is that?
- pests 3y agoIt's a word that starts with a, then 11 letters, then ends in y. The format is not hard to grok once you understand it then context and sheer elimination leaves only a few choices edit: I will say this is a bad example because looking it up there is 40+ words that fit this description so maybe I am biased by experience. i18n works better but I think my point is no longer correct.
- tom_ 3y agoIt's a longstanding abbreviation for "accessibility", along the same lines of i18n being an abbreviation for internationalisation. There's the first letter, and the last letter, and between them a count of the number of letters elidded.
- barrysteve 3y agoYeah English needs another vocab grouping. Greek, Latin and <tech lingo>.
- Izkata 3y agoThe word you're looking for is "jargon". It refers to niche-specific words that are hard for outsiders to understand, and isn't just tech-specific. "Lingo" is a much broader term.
- barrysteve 3y agoTrue. I was grasping at straws for the right word. Thank you. The Greek/Latin/<jargon> structure should be standard or taught in schools in some capacity. Basic programming concepts are popular, useful and should probably be taught as a sub category of English... given that programming is supposed to be a language, and pull its roots (somewhat) from English or "natural language". Society would produce higher quality code if the basic concepts were considered as a literacy requirement for children.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoI would hope (read: pray) that on HN a11y isn't jargon. On a thread about scrollbars (i.e., UI and UX) a11y should be as accessible as saying UI or UX.
- bigstrat2003 3y agoIt's absolutely obscure jargon. One should never use "a11y", just say "accessibility".
- JohnFen 3y agoAnd I just can't make my brain not read that as "ally".
- chiefalchemist 3y agoAgain, obscure and jargon are a function of context. Spitballing...Keep in mind, without context, "accessibility" is also jargon in the sense not everyone is going to know what and how that means. My mum certainly wouldn't understand a11y, I agree. But she also would understand "accessibility" or even "website accessibility." Full disclosure: I'm 5x more picky than the next person when it comes to comms. Absolutely, words matter. But one of the foundations to comms is context. The context in this case is HN. Let's move on now.
- imp0cat 3y agoAnd educate himself just a tiny little bit? ;) Then in his next web project, he just might use https://github.com/pa11y/pa11y https://github.com/pa11y/pa11y and make the world a better place!
- hulitu 3y agoThe new OS M6t W5s 12. Now more accesible. With O5k 365 and M6t E2e. /s