[techs] use of http headers for language information

Dear WCAG Techs folks, 

Wrt to the following WCAG editorial note:
"Editorial Note: Note the HTTP headers is not an HTML technique. But we
should have some way of speaking to the effects of HTTP headers and the
preference with respect to the lang attribute." 
[http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS/#lang-att_primary]

Please see the recent publication from the I18N GEO group on this subject at

http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-http-and-lang

We make the case that one should use language attributes to indicate the
language of content for processing purposes, eg. recognition by screen
readers, and that http headers and/or Content-Language meta statements
should be used to give more general meta-data about the document and its
intended audience. In other words, they should be used for different
purposes, and language attribute(s) on the html tag are best recommended at
this point in your document.

Note, also, that xml:lang needs a mention here. See our draft at 
http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html#ri20040429.0929
28424

RI

============
Richard Ishida
W3C

Received on Wednesday, 21 July 2004 11:34:25 UTC