"I hate acronyms/abbreviations!" Ever heard people around you say it?
In all companies, during meetings, conversations, presentations, but also on the web in webinar presentations, on websites, in social network posts etc., acronyms and abbreviations are constantly used.
The problem with acronyms and abbreviations
Personally, I struggle with acronyms and abbreviations. It's hell for me. As a dyslexic and dysorthographic, I already have trouble remembering the orthograph of words and their signification when they are abstract.
So with acronyms and abbreviations, it's worse.
Why is it worse? Because it requires to remember a lot of things:
Their "orthograph"
Not mistaken the letters with one another and remember the right order of the letters, because it can mean a totally different thing.
For example ACV and AVC won't mean the same thing : ACV apparently means Annual Contract Value, while AVC apparently means Additional Voluntary Contributions.
Their transcription
Remember what each letter stands for - ok this one, forget it, unless I use it every single day... and even when using it every day, some just won't stick in my brain.
For example in my line of work as accessibility experts, we use acronyms for the name of the guidelines we refer to: RGAA* or WCAG**. Those two I remember. However, ARIA, HTML and CSS, which I use everyday as but transcribe to people less often, I just can't remember their transcription. I vaguely remember some of the words.
What doesn't help is that depending on the context, the letters may not always stand for the same word, and worse than that, it's also the case in a same context!
For example, in finance, A can stand for Annual as well as for Average. Or in the digital industry, the P in the acronym PM can stand for Project, Program, Product and the M for Manager or Management (though they are from the same nature, it can change the sense of a sentence!).
Their definition
Knowing the transcription of an acronym or an abbreviation does not mean you know what it means. For example, I learned while discussing with my friend today, that ARR stands for Annual Recurring Revenue, meaning the annual turnover of a company.
Note: I'm giving examples of acronyms here but it's the same for abbreviations!
Efforts
Please avoid telling people struggling with acronyms and abbreviations that they are not making any efforts at remembering them.
Trust me, it is not a matter of effort. It's a matter of memory. Not everyone's memory works the same. Some people remember by seeing the words, others by hearing them, others only if there's a rhythm, others only if the word has a tangible signification or can be associated to an image/small film in their mind...
Some other people can have memory issues, some others can be dyslexic/dysorthographic,...
As you can see, there are many reasons why it can be hard for someone to remember acronyms and abbreviations!
How does it affect other disabilities?
It's hard for people with other disabilities too, for different reasons than stated above.
For people who navigate with a screen reader or with keyboard or other assistive technologies, it can be a struggle to find the transcription too.
Navigating in a page already asks a lot from them from a cognitive stand point so asking them to remember the transcription or definition of an acronym or abbreviation will add to their mental charge.
And if the transcription/definition is towards the top/middle of the page but the abbreviation is repeated more towards the end of the page, it can be a struggle for them to find it again.
What to do?
Really, it's not that hard!
It can be just be a matter of:
- In a document (Word, Google Docs...) or a webpage:
- add the transcription of the acronym/abbreviation the first time you are using it in the page (or the second time if it's in a title).
- add the transcription as a footnote, with an anchor link on the reference number to move to the footnote. (Note: it may also be useful in some cases to have an anchor link back to where the acronym/abbreviation was in the text.)
- In a long document of several pages, you may also add a glossary with the transcription and definition of the acronym/abbreviation with a link towards the glossary available on all occurrences of the acronym/abbreviation in the different pages.
- In a slide (Powerpoint, Google Slides...): add the transcription as a footnote (and don't forget to say it out loud when presenting your slide so people with visual disabilities may have the information).
Like the Meerkat would say: Simples! 😉