[UND WCAG2] i18n comment: Content in two languages

> Comment 4
> At http://www.w3.org/International/reviews/0606-understanding-wcag2/
> Editorial/substantive: S
> Owner: RI
> 
> Location in reviewed document:
> 3.1.1 Example 1
> 
> Comment:
> "A Web unit produced in Germany includes content in both German and 
> English, but most of the content is in German. The primary natural 
> language is identified as German (de)."
> 
> 
> If the primary language is expressed using HTTP or meta tags, it is 
> possible that both languages should be identified if this is a 
> document aimed at a bilingual audience. If the primary language is to 
> be expressed in the html element tag, only one language can be chosen.
> This example is too vague. This goes back to the question of what WCAG 
> means by 'primary language'.
> 
> ----------------------------
> Response from Working Group:
> ----------------------------
> 
> We have clarified our use of primary language to be the default human 
> language of the Web page, and we changed SC
> 3.1.1 to read "The default  human language  of each  Web page  within 
> the content can be programmatically determined." We included a 
> reference to Internationalization Best Practices:
> Specifying Language in XHTML & HTML Content, and added a discussion of 
> multilingual documents to the Intent section.
> We added "default" to the example to make it clearer why this 
> satisfies the SC.
> 
> Currently assistive technologies do not support specifying languages 
> in HTTP headers or meta tags, so those techniques are not considered 
> sufficient at this time.
> 
> HTTP headers and meta tag marking of languages can identify multiple 
> languages, as you point out. Specifying multiple languages in the http 
> header or in meta-data would not specify a default text processing 
> language, so such usage would not satisfy this success criterion. This 
> would be discussed when those techniques are written.

The I18n Core WG thanks you for these changes.

We are not sure how useful the example is, without implementation detail, but that is a different question.  We think we would have preferred something like "A Web page written in HTML and produced... The default human language is identified in a lang attribute on the html element.  Since the lang attribute can take only one value, and since most of the content is in German, German was specified as the default human language."

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
 
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/

Received on Wednesday, 6 June 2007 09:18:56 UTC