The numeronym a11y is the abbreviation of the term “Accessibility”. It is commonly used on the web and social media to abbreviate web accessibility, for instance in the hashtag #a11y on Twitter and in the name of The A11Y Collective.
There are 11 letters between the A and the Y. Because “a one one y” doesn’t really sound well, the abbreviation is pronounced as “alley”, with two l’s.
Other examples of numeronyms are:
- B2B – ‘Business to Business’
- i18n – ‘Internationalisation’
- l10n – ‘Localisation’
- v12n – ‘Virtualization’
- w3 – ‘World Wide Web’
How accessible is a11y?
If you use this abbreviation in your texts, please remember that not everyone knows what it means. So explain it the first time you use it in your content.
