The first time I saw the abbreviation “a11y,” I thought it had something to do with being an LGBTQ+ “ally”. It turns out that it’s something completely different: it’s short for accessibility — as in web accessibility — and it’s used alongside several other abbreviations that follow the same format, like l10n and t9n.

According to the A11Y Project, “a11y” is a numeronym formed by keeping the first and last letters of a word, and replacing the letters in between with the number of letters you’ve removed. It’s also known as a numerical contraction.

Other numeronyms include:

  • t9n: translation
  • l10n: localization
  • g11n: globalization
  • i18n: internationalization
  • v12n: virtualization
  • i14y: interoperability
  • p13n: personalization
  • m17n: multilingualization

What do these terms have in common? Many of them are used in the context of web design to describe how accessible a website is to a global or international audience. If you’re a freelance writer, web designer, or another type of creative professional, you might encounter these concepts in your line of work.

Numeronyms are typically used when there isn’t enough space to write out the full word, such as on social media, but they can also serve as shorthand on job boards and in industry forums — so it may be a good idea to brush up on their meaning.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common numeronyms — and how they can help you make your content more accessible to people around the world.

Accessibility (a11y)

Web accessibility has been baked into the idea of the Internet from early on. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, described universal access to the web as an “essential aspect”. He founded the W3 Consortium, which helped create the first web accessibility standards in the late 1990s.

Web accessibility doesn’t just benefit people who identify as disabled, but anyone with difficulty understanding or navigating a web page. This might include elderly people, people with a temporary incapacity, and people who aren’t fluent in the website’s primary language. Some web accessibility practices include:

  • Alt text: Alt text is a written description of an image (“A blue dog catches a red ball”) that’s published along with the image file. This allows a screen reader to read the description aloud to visually-impaired users.
  • Transcriptions: Transcriptions are text-based descriptions of audio content, i.e., a transcript of a video or podcast interview. These can be helpful to people with auditory difficulties, as well as non-native speakers of a language.
  • Font size and color contrast: Some font sizes and color combinations can be hard to read. Using minimum font sizes (at least 12 pt) and color schemes makes your website more accessible to visitors on various devices.

As a freelancer or content creator just trying to get your work out there, you may not have the resources of a large company to go over every page your website with a fine-toothed comb. But there are free tools out there that can help you write alt-text, create podcast transcriptions, check your contrast levels, and more, such as this free Firefox extension:

WCAG Contrast checker – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)
Download WCAG Contrast checker for Firefox. Checks for compliance with the contrast levels of foreground and background colors combination based on the requirements of WCAG 2.2
Rumoroso

Internationalization (i18n)

You’ve gone ahead and optimized the accessibility settings for your website — but what happens when you want to share your work with a larger audience? How can you ensure that your website is accessible to visitors in other parts of the world?

Internationalization (i18n) is the process of designing your website or software to be able to accommodate multiple languages or regional settings.

This includes things like:

  • Text length and direction: Are your text fields big enough to accommodate languages in which characters take up more space, or people with long or very short names? What about languages that are read from right to left?
  • Time and date: Time and date conventions vary around the world — will your website adjust to your user’s local time and date settings?
  • Symbols and special characters: Do you have a library of characters, such as international currency symbols, to display to global users?

Don’t worry — internationalization is typically done during the development stage, so your web provider or software will do most of the heavy lifting. You can look for services in which internationalization features are built-in.

For example, our website runs on Ghost.org, which supports internationalization via automatic translation in over 60 languages. By changing the language in your admin portal, you can automatically change the language users see for elements like your search tool and sign-up portal:

Internationalization 🌏
Automatic translations for Ghost portal, newsletters, search, and comments.
ChangelogJohn O’Nolan

Translation (t9n)

Internationalization sets the stage for an international browsing experience, but it doesn’t get you all the way there. You’ll need translation (t9n) to convert the rest of your content into one or more target languages.

Let’s say you want to translate additional parts of your website, such as your About page or Service page, into multiple languages. Should you use a translation tool or hire a human to translate it?

That depends on your familiarity with the target language. Automatic translation tools tend to miss out on nuance and complexity, and are best for simple phrases that are unlikely to vary much from one language to another.

For more complex translations, you’ll either need to review the output from your translation tool, or hire a professional to do it for you.

If you run your site with Ghost, you can use the Weglot integration to review and edit automatic translations. Once you’ve set up additional languages, visitors to your site can use a toggle to choose which language to read it in:

Official Ghost + Weglot Integration
Provide localised, translated versions of your Ghost content for international visitors with a Weglot integration. Find out how to get started!
Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform

Localization (l10n)

Localization (l10) goes beyond translation to consider other factors that speak to a particular audience. Think slang, laws, cultural references, and other components that help you make a connection with visitors from a specific region.

In addition to the language on your website, you may want to consider:

  • Images: Are the images on your site relatable to your target audience? Do they include cultural references or people from your target region?
  • Spellings: Even if multiple regions share a language, they may have different spellings or punctuation. For example, this article is localized to U.S. English; in British or Australian English, it would spell “localisation” with an “s”.
  • Legal compliance: Are there any laws that protect visitors in certain regions, such as cookie laws or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?

You’ll notice that even global businesses localize themselves for various markets. Netflix may have viewers all over the world, but it uses different marketing, has different pricing, and offers a different library of content to specific regions.

Globalization (g11n) has its advantages, but offering the same material to users everywhere can water it down. T8n, i18n, and l10n can help you speak to your readers in a more personalized way, and make your website more accessible to people from various regions and linguistic backgrounds.

Have a question about localization or need help setting up your Ghost blog for an international audience? Just send us a message and we’ll see what we can do!