A11y Translator

This is a little project I made to poke fun at abbreviations like “a11y”, “i18n”, and “l10n”.

First off, how do the abbreviations worK:

1. Take a word
2. Count the number of letters between the first and last letter (e.g. hello = 3)
3. Keep only the first and last letter
4. Replace everything in the middle with the number of letters

So hello becomes h3o.

So the concept for this tool is simple: apply this algorithm to any word (or text) you want. Then try to translate it back.

Since there are many different words that translate to the same output, translating it back is bound to fail. This is particularly amusing when trying to translate an entire text!

I made this to poke fun at this type of abbreviations - in particular for words like accessibility, since this makes it so much less accessible.

I had this in mind for a long time now, but never got around to building it, so when I was learning Svelte I decided this was a great candidate for a small project to build with it. I’m really pleased with how it came out!

You can play around with it here if you want!