Creating assistive-technology-friendly abbreviations

Generally speaking, screen readers do not recognize abbreviations and acronyms, and will read them as if they were regular English words. For example, the acronym "ITS" would not be read by screen readers as "I.T.S.", but rather as "It's". This can lead to confusion and misunderstandings, so it is important to be aware of this limitation when designing webpages and other digital documents.

Fixing abbreviation in word document

• Highlight the first instance of “ITS” in the document
• Press Ctrl + H to open the Find and Replace dialogue box
• In the Find what field you should now see “ITS” (without speech marks)
• In the Replace with field type “I T S” (with space)

End Goal - All instances of ITS throughout your document will now have effectively invisible spaces between their letters, and they will be read out letter-by-letter by all the major assistive technologies.