- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 11:19:10 +1000 (AEST)
- To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
On Mon, 26 Apr 1999 thatch@us.ibm.com wrote: > 1) I believe that satisfying this requirement will remove no barriers, let > alone remove significant barriers. To the contrary, it will remove significant barriers if there is more than one language being used in the document, and the document is being read via text to speech software or translated into braille, as I pointed out in my original message. If the LANG attribute is not supported, and/or not provided in the document, the user has no choice but to manually adjust the speech synthesizer or insert controls for the braille translator in order to generate accessible output. This would impose an onorous burden on the user. Thus, failure to supply the LANG attribute amounts to a serious barrier to accessibility, as does the failure on the part of user agents and assistive technologies to implement it. > > 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. The reasoning is quite straightforward: the base language of the document can be supplied not only with the LANG attribute, but also, as I understand it, in HTTP headers; hence the LANG attribute on the HTML element is not the only available solution. Moreover, a user who is working principally in one or two languages could readily select a reasonable default and switch between the different languages when reading various web pages. The situation becomes more complex when language changes occur within the document, even inside sentences. I frequently work with such material and have had direct experience of the problems associated with producing braille copies thereof: one has to edit the markup and insert the language-related codes manually, before sending the text to a braille translator. I have already indicated that essentially the same problem arises in the case of text to speech conversion where a multilingual speech synthesizer is available. Unless the user agent can accurately ascertain the language of every word in the document, the only means of overcoming these difficulties is for the author to specify language changes explicitly in the markup. Prior discussion of this issue within the WAI context has indicated that such exacting language identification is difficult, and could in any case be better carried out by an authoring tool than by the user agent. In conclusion I would again reiterate the importance of leaving the priority status of this checkpoint unchanged.
Received on Monday, 26 April 1999 21:19:16 UTC