Re: Interpreting Checkpoint 11.3

Michael,

I think that the best place to ask this question is in fact the WCAG working
group, who wrote the checkpoint in question - w3c-wai-gl@w3.org is their
mailing list and archives are at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl although I am pretty sure that
this question hasn't been asked there yet.

For what it is worth my personal opinion would be that in regards to
specifying languages what you propose below is sufficient, but minimal. To do
better it is possible to have information in the content as well as having
hreflang attributes - not all tools will interpret the attribute. It is also
possible to have rel="alternate" in A or LINK elements that point to
alternative language versions of the same document - this is mostly useful
for the link element I think.

Server-based content negotiation is also an important technique - if you have
much multilingual content I strongly recommend it. And if there are other
alternatives available I recommend it even more strongly - perhaps through
something like a CC/PP proxy (for more details see the CC/PP work at
http://www.w3.org/Mobile/CCPP but the basic idea is that it provides a
framework for describing different versions of content available and matching
them with different user profiles).

cheers

Charles McCathieNevile

On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, Virant, Michael W wrote:

  Checkpoint 11.3 - - Provide information so that users may receive documents
  according to their preferences.
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/wcag-curric/sam89-0.htm states:
  "If it is not possible to use content negotiation at a server level, in HTML use
  'hreflang' with the <A> or <LINK> elements to identify the language of the
  target documents."

  To meet checkpoint 11.3 for a site without content negotiation, is it sufficient
  to use 'hreflang' in all <A> links to content?  Further - if Checkpoint 4.3 is
  met, will 11.3 also be met if 'hreflang' is only used in <A> links to content in
  languages other than that for the referring document?

  Regards
  Michael Virant
  email: virant.michael.w@edumail.vic.gov.au



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-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
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Received on Sunday, 16 June 2002 22:38:36 UTC