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Comment by croes | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it quite ironic to use a numeronym like a11y for the word accessibility?

Amusingly: you'd think, but by being a uniquely new "word", it's actually far more discoverable.

Searching for "a11y" will find you results for accessibility specifically as it relates to web/app technologies, whereas searching for "accessibility" will find you results relating to everything. Of course that only works if everyone agrees to use it, but thankfully, everyone agreed to use it.

It reminds me of the MAD Magazine parody claiming that "Hooked on Phonics" used the phone number "1-800-ABCDEFG" as a means to filter out the really difficult to teach people.

Wasn't it chosen because it reads "ally" in leetspeak? Agree it's not incredibly accessible.

That's probably a factor in its popularity, but it's in the category of "numerical contractions" like i18n [internationalization] or l10n [localization]. Numerical contractions were already very popular in the space of "making things work correctly for more people" [accessibility, localization, internationalization...].

Except that they don't really 'work correctly' in screen readers. They get read out rather awkwardly.

Sometimes, when I read these contractions too much, I’m starting to think I should short my first name as “T1m”.

No, it is just a numeronym[0], just like K8s for Kubernetes, g11n for globalisation, i18n for internationalisation, or L10n for localisation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeronym

I know that, but I thought the double meaning (numeronym reading like the word "ally") contributed to its success.

I've honestly always wondered if that might be the joke.

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