Hacker News Reader

Comment by snypher | Hacker News Reader

>a11y

I understand a16z is a name but writing other words in this style is very difficult to understand. It would be great for people to use the full term 'accessibility'.

View on HN

I hear you, but in this case (A) there was a ton of relevant context about aria-label, and (B) HN (HackerNews) is a technical community, and on the web, "a11y" has been in very widespread, even mainstream usage for many years, to refer to "accessibility". Notice how "a11y" looks like lowercase "ALLY", as in ally or friend, of the differently-abled.

... and (C) I was commenting from my phone.

One might even say it makes the conversation less “accessible”

Huhm, I don't know a16z, but I do know a11y and i18n...

I know of them, but I can never remember them, and I wouldn't know how to search for them. I'm not sure what they were thinking when they came up with inaccessible accessibility terms.

Neat fact: I learned the other week that this exact format(first, last, number of characters in between) is how old Forths compressed the word encoding. It has a very low collision rate.

That comment is a perfect example of what I love about HN; a polite tangential discussion about abbreviations unearthing a wholly unexpected connection to a clever technical hack. Thank you for sharing! :)

"I wouldn't know how to search for them"

I don't believe you are incapable of typing "a11y" into your browser's location bar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com