RE: 09 Oct 2003 - WCAG WG Teleconference Minutes

Thanks for these examples. As I understood it, though, my action
item/challenge is to find examples where language switches in pages lead to
confusing situations which might be helped by indicating the language in the
source (for example by using a span around <span lang="nl">Nederlandse
tekst</span>). I haven't seen any confusing situations in your examples.

I have only found one interesting example so far:
http://www.en.nationaalarchief.nl/

This is the English version of the website of our National Archives. The
timebar is in Dutch only, which is indicated. But the events are also in
Dutch only, without a warning or explanation. Of course, I can read both but
I think it could be confusing for visitors who don't know Dutch. I don't
think English visitors using a graphic browser would be helped if the Dutch
sections were marked with lang="nl", though. Perhaps if UA offer links to
the appropriate dictionary, similar to Opera's double-click functionality. I
think marking the Dutch sections as such would be helpful to people using
speech browsers, though. If the accent suddenly changes, the listener would
immediately understand there is a language switch. 

Another language problem in the English version is that some subpages are
only available in Dutch, without warning. Ancestors --> Links is one
example. Also, all English subpages have Dutch titles (<title>), which can
be confusing but would not be helped by a lang="nl". 

I happen to have a meeting next week with the National Archives for a
different project. I will point these problems out to them. I hadn't spotted
all of these earlier since I don't usually visit the English version of
their site. They only launched this version of the website a few weeks ago,
so it's understandable that it needs a bit of spit-polish here and there.
(And yes, I am aware of other accessibility problems with the page).

I hope to be able to find more examples in websites I know. As you can see
from this example, many Dutch government sites are at least partially
available in English. Especially the "partial" part can make for some
interesting examples for my action point :-)

Yvette Hoitink
CEO Heritas, Enschede, The Netherlands


> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Charles McCathieNevile
> Sent: zaterdag 11 oktober 2003 15:20
> To: Wendy A Chisholm
> Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
> Subject: Re: 09 Oct 2003 - WCAG WG Teleconference Minutes
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, 10 Oct 2003, Wendy A Chisholm wrote:
> 
> >ACTION: yvette find real world examples of language switches in pages
> 
http://www114.americanexpress.com/homepage/global_splash.html?australia_nav=
newhomepage
(5 scripts, and a fair number of languages)

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Translation/

http://www.w3.org/2003/03/Translations/byTechnology?technology=QuickTips (a
dozen scripts, a few dozen languages)

http://europa.eu.int/

http://www.govt.nz/mi/about-this-site/

http://www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au/

have a look at stuff in multi-lingual countries like Canada, Belgium, New
Zealand, South Africa, India, and local organisations with significantly
multi-ethnic populations. Also language courses...

chaals

Received on Saturday, 11 October 2003 12:27:48 UTC