RE: Action item: new examples for Guideline 3.1

Thanks, Yvette.  Roberto made a smilar point, and I've learned something
new:-)
 
 


"Good design is accessible design." 
Please note our new name and URL!
John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
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.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/
<http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/> 


 

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Yvette P. Hoitink
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 2:03 pm
To: 'WAI WCAG List'
Subject: RE: Action item: new examples for Guideline 3.1


John Slatin wrote:
 
 Examples for Guideline 3.1 Level 1 SC 1

	<proposed>

	Example 1. A document that exists in English, French, and German
versions.

	 

	A corporate Web server identifies the country where a user's IP
address is located. It displays the site in the appropriate language.  A
user's screen reader automatically uses the appropriate pronunciation
rules, based on the presence of a language-identifier in the document.

	</proposed> 

	 

I think using IP addresses to predict language preferences is a bad
practice that we shouldn't encourage, not even in an example. For
example, in the Netherlands, there are many people who have a .com IP
address and who would be served an English version instead of Dutch.
Also, we have many people working here that don't speak Dutch but do
have a .nl IP address. And I'm not even talking about countries like
Canada or Belgium, that have more than 1 official language.

 

As far as I know, the preferred way to automatically serve the correct
language version is by letting your user agent know what languages you
understand. The user agent should then negotiate with the server about
the language in which the document is served. 

 

<counterproposal>
A corporate Web server requests the language preferences of the user
from the user agent. It displays the site in the appropriate language. A
user's screen reader automatically uses the appropriate pronunciation
rules, based on the presence of a language-identifier in the document. 
</counterproposal> 
 
Yvette Hoitink
Heritas, Enschede, the Netherlands
E-mail: y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl
WWW: http://www.heritas.nl