Explain abbreviations with the abbr element
The abbr element carries an expansion in its title attribute, so WHO can also announce as World Health Organization. W3C classes this one as advisory, which means it helps and never settles a rule by itself, and it attaches it to a single criterion, 3.1.4 Abbreviations, at Level AAA. It used to be sufficient. W3C demoted it because the expansion lives in a title attribute, and a title attribute reaches a mouse pointer and almost nobody else. That demotion is also the boundary. Use abbr wherever it fits, and write the expansion out in the visible text the first time the abbreviation appears, because that version reaches every reader on every device.
How we find it in an audit
No tool can tell that an abbreviation needed explaining, so this one gets read rather than scanned. We go through the copy the way a first-time visitor would and note every short form the page never spells out, which on anything written for internal readers is usually most of them.
How affected users experience it
This is a comprehension fix first and a screen reader fix second. Some screen readers will speak the expansion on request, most readers never get one, and a sentence like submit your DSAR through the SAR portal leaves everybody outside the department guessing. Spelling the words out in the sentence itself costs four words and helps the whole audience, people using assistive technology included.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
<p>Contact the <abbr title="Human Resources Business Partner">HR BP</abbr> for your region.</p>
<!-- stronger still: write it out in full the first time -->Fails
<p>Contact the HR BP for your region.</p>The other techniques filed under this rule
7 guides on this site are filed under 3.1.4 Abbreviations. W3C lists this one as advisory for that rule rather than sufficient, which means it helps real readers without being accepted as evidence you conformed.
- G55sufficientLink unusual words to their definitions
- G62sufficientProvide a glossary for specialized terms
- G70sufficientOffer a dictionary search for specialized content
- G97sufficientExpand each abbreviation at its first use
- G102sufficientExplain every abbreviation where it first appears
- PDF8sufficientProvide expansions for abbreviations in PDFs
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique H28: Providing definitions for abbreviations by using the abbr element. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.