we may have a new issue

I think we may have a new issue, of making BIDI accessible. From what I
understand, and in fact have tried to do today, logical architecture, comes
out a mess on most browsers (except the latest I.E.). It may be the
recommendation, but it is just not supported.

 Unfortunately visual architecture  will probably be accessed backwoods by
disability orientated user agents.

The only solution I can think of is to use DHTML, and produce a page that
works with the browser or user agent.

Not good.

Even with this approach there are, oh so many problems, Browsers are not
limited to I.E. and Netscape, so if the "unknown browser" defaults to
logical architecture, and the user is just using a different browser that
does not support logical architecture, he will see a messy screen. We can
give him a button "click hear if your screen is backwards", but the web
designers will not like it , the 3 click rule, they may lose traffic.

BIDI web designers  seem to be using visual architecture. I think it may
take some lateral thinking to get this one cliched.
Any ideas?
Lisa
-----Original Message-----
From: Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net>
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Date: Thursday, September 14, 2000 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: a whole new headache?


>New, no; headache, yes.
>
>If you start with the HTML specification (at least any version since HTML4)
>and search on BIDI or bi-directional you should find that the
>Recommendations from the W3C are squarely in favor of a standard logical
>architecture which supports bi-directional lanaguages, and where
>line-breaking is performed in rendering by the client and not in the
>authoring.  And most or all the rest of what "logical Hebrew" has that
>"visual Hebrew" doesn't that makes it superior for your needs.
>
>This does not mean that the fully logicalized implementation is endemic.
>There are varying levels of implementation of the W3C Recommendations in
>the IT marketplace.
>
>But this does emphasize that Internationalization and Accessibility are
>frequently allies in wishing for a more logical view to be preserved in the
>medium.
>
>And that sometimes the problem is persuading people to use the logical
>version.
>
>Al
>
>At 12:56 PM 2000-09-14 +0200, you wrote:
>>A student of mine asked me to look into writing html with a Hebrew which
is
>>a bi-directional language (so is Arabic).
>>From my research for her Visual Hebrew can be see by browsers on all
>>platforms: PC, Mac and X-terminal (UNIX). Logical Hebrew can only be seen
>>from a PC.
>>But,
>>Visual Hebrew, the writer (or the converter program) has to take care of
>>breaking the lines. So you have to use absolute width with page layout
>>tables. If the browser makes break the line by itself, the text will
become
>>unreadable.
>>
>>Now for people don't have Hebrew installed on their PC the whole thing is
>>gibberish. So you have to have an English version page. But that seems to
me
>>to be, well, a second best.
>>
>>A lot of this conflicts with  our guidelines ( absolute width, tables for
>>page layout...) and altogether seems to be a big accessibility problem for
a
>>lot of people.
>>
>>Have we dealt with all this before I joined? if so were can I read up
about
>>it?
>>
>>Or is this a whole new headache?
>>
>>Yours, with the Tylenol
>>Lisa
>>
>
>

Received on Thursday, 14 September 2000 13:07:24 UTC