[uf-discuss] Expanding the abbr pattern

[Ben Buchanan]

Hi Jeremy,

> I'd be interested in hearing other arguments for or against this idea.

I think it's a humans vs. machines issue. To my mind, the ABBR element
is there to provide additional information to the user (the human). In
this case, it's being used to add a timestamp in a format that I've
never heard a human use. To put it another way, it's not adding
information for the user; it's adding data for the machine.

IMHO the ABBR title should always enrich, explain or disambiguate the
contents of the ABBR tag. Using a full-string timestamp doesn't do
that (nor does geo data, to touch on a related problem). Although it's
tremendously useful for uf parsing, I think it's trumped by the
problems it causes for screen reader users.

So, I'd be happy to see the title shifted to a span - still not
entirely perfect I suppose, but it leaves ABBR to the humans :)

cheers,
Ben

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