June 2, 2026
That time I accessed a11y
This is my submission for the June 2026 IndieWeb Carnival. The theme is “No way!?”, hosted by Alex Hsu.
I saw “a11y” recently and it reminded me of my “No way!?” moment when I finally figured out, after years of puzzlement, what it meant.
For the longest time, I thought it was a fanciful way of spelling “ally,” but that didn’t make sense in context so I just moved on.
I can’t remember how I learned that it is short for “accessibility” — the “11” standing in for the 11 letters between the “a” and the “y.” It might have been around the same I figured out that “i18n” stands for “internationalization.”
While researching this post, I learned that these are known as numeronyms, and that there are plenty of others.
l10n = localization
k8s = kubernetes
m17n = multilingualization
c14n = canonicalization
p13n = personalization
I can’t say I’ve run into any of these in the wild, likely because they are mainly used by developers within their communities.
Getting back to my “No way!?” moment with a11y, my first reaction was that it seemed clever, and I could understand why you wouldn’t want to write out that many letters every time. This numeronym is also handy for web design. You can make it nice and big, but not take up a lot of space.
But I couldn’t help but wonder how many other people have for years missed out on some good information about accessibility because the title went over their heads. In a way, it can ironically make this important guidance less accessible.
Still, I don’t want to sound critical. Good people are doing their best to make the web accessible, and a11y is — once you know what it means — an ingenious way of reaching out.