LANG attribute

Hi English speakers,

It is real fun (or sad?) to see so many native English speakers
have an openion about LANGuages. Although I think the HTML specs 
are quite clear what the LANG information could be used for it 
might useful to sumarize this within the WAI context:

1. The LANG attribute can be used if more than one language is used
   in a (or a set of) documents.
   This can be used to instruct e.g. screen readers, but is also 
   VERY useful when using WEB-phone facilities (of courrse also using
   sethetic speech).
2. The LANG attributes are very useful when using "search" mechanisms.
3. The LANG attributes can be very useful to guide spelling facilities.
4. The LANG attribute can be useful to change the user interface
   language (especially when usd the in HTML and BODY tags).
5. The LANG attributes are very useful in ABBR and ACRONYM like tags.
   It sometimes happens we (europeans) refer to an english-based
   abbriviation.
6. What is your view on language-education material in HTML-format?

The only problem with the LANG attribute is that no-one ever uses it.
How a good feature is never used properly.
When used properly it could be useful for everybody (not speaking
the default web language).
I hope this makes clear the LANG attribute is useful if it is used
and should referred possibly even in a separate paragraph.

Best regards,
Jaap

Message from: Jaap van Lelieveld      The Netherlands
              Chairman of EBU commission on Technical Devices and Services
E-mail:       Jaap.van.Lelieveld@inter.nl.net

USING: YARN V0.92 as an offline reader, and
       UQWK / OLMENU under UNIX for mail and news transfer

Received on Tuesday, 27 April 1999 17:01:08 UTC