a11y/abbr-title · Abbreviation without an expansion

An <abbr> without a title gives readers no expansion. Visual users get no tooltip and assistive technology has nothing to expand.

Severity: info · Category: a11y

What it checks

Flags an <abbr> with no title giving the expansion:

<p>The <abbr>W3C</abbr> publishes the spec.</p>

A blank literal title="" carries no expansion and is also flagged. An expression-valued title={expr} passes, since its rendered value is unknowable and the attribute’s presence is assumed to carry one.

Not flagged:

An <abbr> with a spread attribute, whose rendered attributes are unknowable.
An <abbr> inside <svg>, which is not an SVG element and never renders there.

Why it matters

<abbr> marks an abbreviation, but without a title giving the expansion the element adds no information. Visual users get no tooltip and assistive technology has nothing to expand.

This is a best-practice nudge, not a conformance requirement: the spec keeps title optional, and giving the expansion in the surrounding prose is also correct markup.

How to fix

Add the expansion as title, or spell the term out in full at first use:

<p>The <abbr title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</abbr> publishes the spec.</p>

Limitations

An expansion provided in the surrounding text, as in The World Wide Web Consortium (<abbr>W3C</abbr>), is conforming markup this rule cannot see, and is the known false-positive class. Silence those with the inline directive below rather than adding a redundant title.

Mode differences

None. This rule reads source, the same .svelte and .ts files, everywhere it runs. The CLI, the Vite plugin’s build pass, and the live dashboard’s static baseline all report it identically, and the rendered-HTML pass never re-evaluates it. Scoping a run with --route skips it: component-scoped rules have no route to attribute a finding to.

Disabling

If the expansion is given in the surrounding text, silence the element with , or turn the rule off:

export default {
  rules: {
    'a11y/abbr-title': 'off'
  }
};