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Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2024 21:15:25 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Casing of acronyms in class and method names
To: Juliette Reinders Folmer <php-internals_nospam@adviesenzo.nl>,
 internals@lists.php.net
References: <792b2282-b7a3-40dd-899c-daab55353316@bastelstu.be>
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From: tim@bastelstu.be (=?UTF-8?Q?Tim_D=C3=BCsterhus?=)

Hi

On 4/5/24 20:01, Juliette Reinders Folmer wrote:
> In the "It decreases readability" section you make a sweeping statement
> about accessibility, but don't back that up with research. Please back
> your statement up as based on my understanding, the opposite is true.

For context: This paragraph was added by Larry. It's my name on the RFC 
of course and I approved of the addition he made. Nevertheless Larry 
might've additional resources to add here.

> Case in point: if written in all caps, screenreaders will spell the
> characters out - think HTML -. If written in Mixed case, screenreaders
> will try to pronounce the word, making acronyms and other abbreviations
> very hard to understand for anyone using a screenreader.
> 
> This is something which has repeatedly been pointed out, for instance at
> conferences regarding conference acronym hashtags, like #DPC.
> 
> So, I'd be very interested to see your statement backed up by actual
> research and invite you to look into this a little deeper.

Your remark looks at the accessibility from the PoV of a developer with 
impaired eyesight that is dependent on assistive technology. However 
accessibility also affects developers with regular vision. The concerns 
of these two groups might conflict.

W3C's accessibility guidelines point out that:

 > Text in all capital letters is more difficult to read for most 
people, with and without disabilities.

(https://w3c.github.io/low-vision-a11y-tf/requirements.html#capitalization)

Harvards's Accessibility Guidelines agree:

 > Avoid using all caps. Readability is reduced with all caps because 
all words have a uniform rectangular shape, meaning readers can't 
identify words by their shape.

(https://accessibility.huit.harvard.edu/design-readability)

Of course program identifiers are not regular text and indeed more 
similar to hashtags, in that they do not permit the inclusion of 
whitespace to separate words. Underscores would work, but that would 
just add to the inconsistency.

For Hashtags I found several resources pointing out to capitalize each 
word separately. For acronyms most resources pointed out that they 
should be avoided entirely (e.g. 
https://studentlife.mit.edu/das/accessibility/digital-accessibility/socialmedia, 
https://www.nyu.edu/life/information-technology/web-and-digital-publishing/digital-publishing/accessibility/how-to-guides/social-media.html#acronyms) 
and that recommendation is already part of the existing guidelines.

I've tested with my Android phone with the 'performHttpRequest' example 
and both variants where read out equally terrible as 'per-form age tee 
tee pre-quest' (i.e. merging the p with the request). And your example 
of HTML was read out as 'age tee em el' (or rather the German 
pronounciation of the letters) for both HTML and Html. The lack of 
vowels might've helped with the result, though.

The case of the boundary between two consecutive acronyms being unclear 
should affect developers with regular vision and impaired vision alike 
(i.e. PDOODBC and XSLRR).

 From my personal experience as a human with regular vision (not even 
glasses), the variant of treating acronyms as regular words is much 
easier to parse.

Best regards
Tim Düsterhus