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Should screen reader announce short form label or long form value?

I have an Australian state dropdown.

  • The label is like ACT, VIC, NSW (short form)
  • But the value is like Australian Capital Territory, Victoria (long form)

Should the screen reader announce the short form or the long form?

Solution

  • First of all, it's nearly always a bad idea to have a difference between what is written and what is spoken, for at least two reasons:

    • Blind people aren't the only ones to use screen readers. There are also partially sighted people, people with dyslexia or cognitive impairments. For these people you create a useless contradiction in their brain.
    • In braille, should you consider the written text because braille is a form of writing, or the accessible label (corresponding to the spoken text)? All screen readers don't answer equally to this question and/or have settings to decide

    Now, you could certainly ask what is the best to show in your list: the short or the long form, independently of pure design constraints.

    For this question, there is no definitive answer best suited for all cases.

    In fact you have four possibilities:

    • Short form alone, i.e. "VIC"
    • Long form alone, i.e. "Victoria"
    • Both, short form first, then long form, such as "VIC - Victoria"
    • Both, long form first, then short form, such as "Victoria (VIC)"

    The following points can help you decide:

    • How many elements there are in the list ? 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, more ? The more elements there are, the less it's intuitive to use short form only
    • Can the user type the first letters of the short and/or long form in order to quickly find the corresponding element in the list ? Only the very first letter, or several (possibly three or four) ? Above 10 or 15 elements, you should almost always allow full letter navigation and not only the first letter
    • How well are the abbreviations known to the users ? Are they used to using them ?
    • What are users usually writing and expect to read?
    • How similar the short form compared to the long one ? e.g. difficulty to find "Victoria" only based on the abbreviation, if it is "VIC" compared to if it was something less obviously related like "VCT".

    You are talking about Australian states. I don't know Australia at all, but I assume that there aren't more than a few dozens options, and if your site is mostly made for Australians, they are certainly used to the short form. So it shouldn't be a major problem to keep the short form only. If you want to be more foreigner-friendly, you might have both.