RE: REF 3.1 TAKE 2 - Add specificity to required checkpoint.

This is what we need to discuss.

 

Phrases like that are not comprehensible most people who can see either.
Just like they sound like noise to you, they look like noise to the sighted
person.

 

Just like you can go back and have them spelled and see that they are some
other language,  the person who reads can stop and look at them and guess
that they are in another language.    Some people will know what these
foreign phrases mean.  Others will not.  Some screen readers can recognize
that these are not English words and look for common foreign phrases.  All
screen readers could if this was seen as important by blind users.   But it
hasn't been important enough to date.

 

I am wondering if we want to create a requirement for a lot of markup to do
something that can be done fairly easily electronically.    And if it was,
it would actually be 1000% more useful since it could also tell the 90% of
the population who don't know what it means even if it was pronounced
properly, what it means at that same time.  

 

Don't know though.  Need to think about this

 

 
Gregg

 -- ------------------------------ 
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. 
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of John M Slatin
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 3:46 PM
To: gv@trace.wisc.edu; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: REF 3.1 TAKE 2 - Add specificity to required checkpoint.

 

Thanks for clarifying, Gregg.  But now I have another concern:

 

Does this mean that a French phrase like "je ne sais quoi" need not be
tagged if it occurs within an English sentence? When it's not tagged with
the lang attribute, JAWS pronounces the phrase like this: Gee knee sayze
kwoy.  It sounds quite different if it's marked up!

 

Here's an example sentence:

There's a certain je ne sais quoi about her, isn't there?

 

If you saw this in a print novel, the phrase would probably be in italics,
the convention in English usage for visually marking non-English words and
phrases.  An English speaker with good knowledge of French *might* recognize
"Gee knees sayze kwoy" as JAWS' attempt to say "je ne sais quoi," but a
non-French speaker wouldn't have a clue.

 

John

 

 

John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for Technology & Learning
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C
1 University Station G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.ital.utexas.edu <http://www.ital.utexas.edu/> 

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto:gv@wiscmail.wisc.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 3:22 pm
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: REF 3.1 TAKE 2 - Add specificity to required checkpoint.

It has come to my attention that my note is ambiguous.  I have changed it
therefore to fix the impression that foreign words are not allowed.  It was
meant to say that they must be marked if they are not in the dictionary. 


 REF - 3.1     Add specificity to required checkpoint.


 

 

Suggest that we add the following to the end of the first success criteria.


 

"Foreign words or phrases that are found in standard unabridged dictionaries
for the natural language of the content do not need to be marked.  (For a
list of common examples of exceptions for different languages, see the
W3C-WAI foreign word exception examples listing at [insert URL].)"

 

Note: these lists do not currently exist - but could be easily generated as
examples so people would know what we mean.