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Comment by tovej | Hacker News Reader

You couldn't create a parody of this naming convention that's more outlandish than the way it's actually being used.

Yes you can! Accessibility gets abbreviated to a11y, which is about as inaccessible as it gets.

Only if you've never seen it before. The word "accessibility" is incredibly inaccessible to non-native speakers and native speakers with learning disabilities or dyslexia. There's some double characters in there but which ones? Also it sounds like there's an a or "uh" sound in there but somehow it's all "i"s except one is an "e"? "a11y" is four letters (well, two of them are digits but who's counting?) and clearly refers to one particular concept.

Likewise "i18n" (internationalization/internationalisation) and "l10n" (localization/localisation) avoids confusion of whether it's "ize" or "ise", which is literally the problem those concepts try to solve.

I can somewhat excuse "k8s" with "nobody can remember how kubernetes is spelled let alone pronounced" (Germans insist pronouncing the "kuber" part the same way "kyber/cyber" is pronounced in other Greek loanwords, with a German "ü" umlaut) but I admit that one is a stretch and "visual puns" like "k0s" ("minimal", you see?) and "k3s" (the digit 3 looks like half of an 8 so it's "lightweight", right?) are a bit beyond the pale for me.

>The word "accessibility" is incredibly inaccessible to non-native speakers

There are at least a dozen languages where the English word "accessibility" translates to the same word spelled slightly differently.

I'm not sure what your point is. I qualified my claim very explicitly and what you said doesn't contradict any of it.

I'm not saying it's difficult to understand. I'm saying it's an unwieldy word and "a11y" is easier to remember and write correctly.

You specifically called it out as being "inaccessible" (ie, difficult to understand) to non-native speakers (of English).

Also, "a11y" looks too much like the English word "ally". That, IMO, is more likely to cause reading difficulties, particularly with non-native speakers and people with dyslexia.

o11y? In my head it sounds like it's a move in "Tony Hawk: Pro K8er"

It's the Wingdings of naming conventions.

You don't like n7ms?

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