RE: REF 3.1 TAKE 2 - Add specificity to required checkpoint.

Home Page Reader supports automatic language detection and switches on
the fly.  The Window-Eyes 4.5 beta available now does so as well.  I
would guess that JAWS will do so in the not-too-distant future.  So it's
becoming more reasonable to ask people to do this sort of markup.
 
It would be *realy* nice if authoring tools supported this work-- for
example, if their spellcheckers encounter foreign phrases that are in
the dictionary, the tool could prompt the user to identify the langauge
(and could provide a pulldown list of ISO 2-letter codes).
 
John
 
 

John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for Technology & Learning
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C
1 University Station G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.ital.utexas.edu <http://www.ital.utexas.edu/> 



-----Original Message-----
From: Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto:gv@wiscmail.wisc.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 11:20 am
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: REF 3.1 TAKE 2 - Add specificity to required checkpoint.



This is what we need to discuss.

 

Phrases like that are not comprehensible most people who can see either.
Just like they sound like noise to you, they look like noise to the
sighted person.

 

Just like you can go back and have them spelled and see that they are
some other language,  the person who reads can stop and look at them and
guess that they are in another language.    Some people will know what
these foreign phrases mean.  Others will not.  Some screen readers can
recognize that these are not English words and look for common foreign
phrases.  All screen readers could if this was seen as important by
blind users.   But it hasn't been important enough to date.

 

I am wondering if we want to create a requirement for a lot of markup to
do something that can be done fairly easily electronically.    And if it
was, it would actually be 1000% more useful since it could also tell the
90% of the population who don't know what it means even if it was
pronounced properly, what it means at that same time.  

 

Don't know though.  Need to think about this

 


Gregg

 -- ------------------------------ 
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. 
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of John M Slatin
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 3:46 PM
To: gv@trace.wisc.edu; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: REF 3.1 TAKE 2 - Add specificity to required checkpoint.

 

Thanks for clarifying, Gregg.  But now I have another concern:

 

Does this mean that a French phrase like "je ne sais quoi" need not be
tagged if it occurs within an English sentence? When it's not tagged
with the lang attribute, JAWS pronounces the phrase like this: Gee knee
sayze kwoy.  It sounds quite different if it's marked up!

 

Here's an example sentence:

There's a certain je ne sais quoi about her, isn't there?

 

If you saw this in a print novel, the phrase would probably be in
italics, the convention in English usage for visually marking
non-English words and phrases.  An English speaker with good knowledge
of French *might* recognize "Gee knees sayze kwoy" as JAWS' attempt to
say "je ne sais quoi," but a non-French speaker wouldn't have a clue.

 

John

 

 

John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for Technology & Learning
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C
1 University Station G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.ital.utexas.edu <http://www.ital.utexas.edu/> 

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto:gv@wiscmail.wisc.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 3:22 pm
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: REF 3.1 TAKE 2 - Add specificity to required checkpoint.

It has come to my attention that my note is ambiguous.  I have changed
it therefore to fix the impression that foreign words are not allowed.
It was meant to say that they must be marked if they are not in the
dictionary. 


 REF - 3.1     Add specificity to required checkpoint.


 

 

Suggest that we add the following to the end of the first success
criteria.  

 

"Foreign words or phrases that are found in standard unabridged
dictionaries for the natural language of the content do not need to be
marked.  (For a list of common examples of exceptions for different
languages, see the W3C-WAI foreign word exception examples listing at
[insert URL].)"

 

Note: these lists do not currently exist - but could be easily generated
as examples so people would know what we mean.