Re: Information on support in speech synthesizers of language switching

There are additional differences not mentioned about HPR

>Gregg,
>
>This came up on the conference call today. Here's information on this
>topic from Mark Hakkinen on the UA list [1] (sent 24 November 1999):
>
>> pwWebSpeak allows synthesizer language changing for the page under these
>> conditions:
>>
>> 1. The LANG attribute is specified in the HTML element.
>> 2. The LANG attribute corresponds to one of the installed synthesizer
>> languages.
>>
>> Users can manually switch the "reading" synthesizer to one of the
installed
>> languages, if no LANG attribute is present.
>>
>> Presently we don't switch on LANG attributes within a page (though we
are
>> likely to add that). We do note significant time delays when switching
>> between some synthesizers (eg, some SAPI engines may exhibit a long load
>> time, particularly when using engines from different vendors). That has
been
>> a concern of mine if we switch on arbitrary LANG attributes appearing in
the
>> page as it could introduce unnatural reading flow.
>
>From Jim Thatcher (24 November 1999) [2]:
>
>> Home Page Reader does the same and plans the same.

IBM Home Page Reader does not only rely on the lang attribute in the HTML
element,
but will also scan the page and determine the appropriate natural
language and switch to the installed language for the duration of the page.
This
is known as "auto language detection".  Also, when reading or switching
between
it's own controls, for example it's history list, HPR will speak the French
title
in French, the Italian title in Italian, and switch back to English on the
English
page.  HPR does not recognize the lang= attribute on other elements within
the page.

I still consider switching mid stream a translation issue, not
accessibility.

>Hope this helps,
>
> - Ian

>[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/1999OctDec/0434.html
>[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/1999OctDec/0435.html


Regards,
Phill Jenkins
IBM Accessibility Center - Special Needs Systems

Received on Thursday, 10 August 2000 18:16:23 UTC