The ironic inaccessibility of a11y
This resonated with me:
It’s ironic to me that the numeronym “a11y” lacks accessibility: it’s not immediately decipherable by humans who aren’t “in the club”; and, in some fonts, it’s visually indistinguishable from the word “ally” (with lowercase L’s), which can foil searches for clarity.
— Eric Meyer (@meyerweb) November 5, 2018
Because I bet it took me a year after seeing that acronym (“numeronym”, I guess) for the first time to know that was just a stand-in for the word “accessibility”. I’m only now just understanding that “i18n” means “Internationalization” and “l10n” means “Localization”. I wonder how many conversations or articles I’ve missed because I just assumed the weird moniker was referring to something that had nothing to do with me. On the flip side, I wonder what good has come from having these cool words form a banner to rally under.
Lots of good conversation in that thread. I don’t know enough to have an opinion about whether anyone else should or shouldn’t use it, but remembering my own confusion, I think I’ll avoid it around here.
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