Do you know what's not accessible?

[catherineflick@mastodon.me.uk]

@jonathanhogg yes! I keep reading it as “ally”

[hellocatfood@post.lurk.org]

@jonathanhogg That and I18n can do one.

[amenonsen@flipping.rocks]

@jonathanhogg I agree, if it's not used appropriately, it has approximately zero acceptability.

[jtruk@mastodon.social]

@jonathanhogg I wonder what the origin story is?
It feels like something someone wrote in a conference talk to crack a gag about making something over-trendy and unintentionally inaccessible.
And people used it as a joke to each other so much that the funny wore off and it accidentally got adopted.

[lpbkdotnet@mstdn.social]

@jtruk @jonathanhogg the general form (a11y, i18n, k8s) has been around a while now.

I think i18n came first, probably because it was easier than repeatedly having the "internationalisation vs internationalization" spelling debate...

But I have seen it said that "k8s" was first because no one could remember how to spell (or pronounce) kubernetes?

Either way, I absolutely hate that this has just become how the tech industry abbreviates things.

It feels like it's on the "smug" side of clever

[jonathanhogg@mastodon.social]

@lpbkdotnet @jtruk Wikipedia believes that i18n was coined in the 70s and is DEC's fault. Since humans read word-at-a-time by shape, I consider them all to be instances of "I am too lazy to type and therefore you will have to work harder to read"

[jtruk@mastodon.social]

@jonathanhogg @lpbkdotnet None of this excludes 'a11y' being a joke that got out of hand. I think that's a pretty strong candidate here!

[themediumkahuna@tech.lgbt]

@CatherineFlick @jonathanhogg me too! I’m glad I’m not the only one

[1a1nc@mastodon.online]

@jonathanhogg I also had to look this up (apart from k8s since my brother works on calico, and it actually sounds vaguely like the actual word). So yeah, and as a system architect - no developers should not be using this shorthand in API's - developers should learn to f&^king spell and express themselves clearly in code/docs/etc or have their work QA'd by people who can

[david_chisnall@infosec.exchange]

@jonathanhogg

A8y! I c8y a3e!

[gvlx@masto.pt]

@jonathanhogg @lpbkdotnet @jtruk But it helps sometimes: try to go a interoperability meeting and you'll see why saying "i14y" is much more pratical.

Whatever the case, in my texts I always put an abbreviation with the expanded term right in the beginning. If it's seldom used, I only write the expanded form.

#writing #abbreviations

[gnate@ohai.social]

@themediumkahuna Oh, does it not? Even knowing it references accessibility, I still assumed it was to be read as "ally."

I hereby declare its use even dumber than I thought.
@CatherineFlick @jonathanhogg

[aedius@lavraievie.social]

@jonathanhogg

"But it looks like ally, it's great"

Fuck you Jean-Eude. People should not do gatekeeping for something that important.

[gnate@ohai.social]

@themediumkahuna
'xsablt' would even make more sense...
@CatherineFlick @jonathanhogg

[paniczgodek@functional.cafe]

@jonathanhogg someone wrote a brilliant post about that:

Marmly Owl (@Vordus@chitter.xyz)

A11y is about the least accessible way of writing 'accessibility' possible. A-11-letters-Y is not enough information to go on unless you've already been primed to understand it. It's aesthetically (a11y) ugly, astonishingly (a11y) pretentious, and has just this awful whiff of artificiality (a11y) about it. In an age where machines will automatically (a11y) type entire words out for you using the shorthand is aggravatingly (a11y) lazy and unintuitive. Quite frankly it strains acceptability (a11y). I don't think that this numeronym is being used appropriately (a11y).

Chitter (chitter.xyz)