RE: Action item: new examples for Guideline 3.1

John Slatin wrote:
 
 Examples for Guideline 3.1 Level 1 SC 1

<proposed>

Example 1. A document that exists in English, French, and German  versions.

 

A corporate Web server identifies the country where a user's IP address is
located. It displays the site in the appropriate language.  A user's screen
reader automatically uses the appropriate pronunciation rules, based on the
presence of a language-identifier in the document.

</proposed> 

 

I think using IP addresses to predict language preferences is a bad practice
that we shouldn't encourage, not even in an example. For example, in the
Netherlands, there are many people who have a .com IP address and who would
be served an English version instead of Dutch. Also, we have many people
working here that don't speak Dutch but do have a .nl IP address. And I'm
not even talking about countries like Canada or Belgium, that have more than
1 official language.

 

As far as I know, the preferred way to automatically serve the correct
language version is by letting your user agent know what languages you
understand. The user agent should then negotiate with the server about the
language in which the document is served. 

 

<counterproposal>
A corporate Web server requests the language preferences of the user from
the user agent. It displays the site in the appropriate language. A user's
screen reader automatically uses the appropriate pronunciation rules, based
on the presence of a language-identifier in the document. 
</counterproposal> 
 
Yvette Hoitink
Heritas, Enschede, the Netherlands
E-mail: y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl
WWW: http://www.heritas.nl