- From: <thatch@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 19:44:49 -0500
- To: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
- cc: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Jason said: "a priority 2 rating should be retained in respect of multilingual material." Priority 2 says: A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents. 1) I believe that satisfying this requirement will remove no barriers, let alone remove significant barriers. 2) It is inconceivable to me why the lang attribute internal to the page should be priority 2, while the lang attribute on the html element is priority 3. As Phill has already indicated, IBM's Home Page Reader will be supporting the lang attribute on the HTML element but not within the page. I don't think the lang element at the top should be priority 2 either. 3) I don't see why the language of a phrase is an accessibility issue for person's with disabilities -- even if either this or 6.3 were yielding significant benefits. Jim Thatcher IBM Special Needs Systems www.ibm.com/sns thatch@us.ibm.com (512)838-0432 Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> on 04/26/99 06:25:20 PM To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org> cc: (bcc: James Thatcher/Austin/IBM) Subject: Re: PRI - 9 LANG Attribute In anticipation of user agent support for the LANG attribute, in recognition of the language-dependent nature of text to speech and braille conversion processes, and taking into account the difficulties raised by multilingual documents, I propose that no change be made to the priority of this checkpoint. If it were only a priority 3 requirement today, then it would be rarely implemented, even in multilingual documents. Then, when user agents start supporting the LANG attribute, it will not be of benefit due to the absence of this important linguistic distinction in marked up documents. Therefore, a priority 2 rating should be retained in respect of multilingual material. Also, this requirement needs to be considered in relation to the WAI user agent guidelines, which ought to recommend implementation of the LANG attribute by user agents and assistive technologies.
Received on Monday, 26 April 1999 20:48:17 UTC