Proposed rewording for 3.1 SC (was Clever Keys, dictionary.com, etc.)

This message proposes new wording for three success criteria under
Guideline 3.1. The new wording is an attempt to resolve the difficulties
that have arisen over the phrases "programmatically located" and
"programmatically determined" in L1 SC 2 and L2 SC 2 and 3 as they
appear in the 11 March 2004 Working Draft at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-20040311/.  I've also provided a
pointer to possible techniques.
 

Guideline 3.1, Level 1, Success Criterion 1 

 <begin proposed>Guideline 3.1 L1 SC 2>

2. The expanded form of abbreviations and acronyms is available through
context or markup.

</end proposed>

 


Guideline 3.1, Level 2, Success criteria 2 and 3

<begin proposed>Guideline 3.1 L2 SC 2>

2. The definitions and pronunciations of all words in the content are
available through context or markup. [I]

</end proposed>

<begin proposed Guideline 3.1 L2 SC3>

3. The meaning of all idioms in the content are available through
context or markup. [I]

 </end proposed>

 


Possibilities

 The Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) 1.0 Candidate
Recommendation at http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/

seems to suggests some of the ways in which these criteria might be
achieved.  It's not an exact match, but I do think it's suggestive. 

* Markup support: The phoneme element allows a phonemic sequence to be
provided for any word or word sequence. This provides the content
creator with explicit control over pronunciations. The say-as element
might also be used to indicate that text is a proper name that may allow
a synthesis processor to apply special rules to determine a
pronunciation. The lexicon element can be used to reference external
definitions of pronunciations. These elements can be particularly useful
for acronyms and abbreviations that the processor is unable to resolve
via its own text normalization and that are not addressable via direct
text substitution or the sub element (see paragraph 3, above).

 

* Non-markup behavior: In the absence of a phoneme element the synthesis
processor must apply automated capabilities to determine pronunciations.
This is typically achieved by looking up words in a pronunciation
dictionary (which may be language-dependent) and applying rules to
determine other pronunciations. synthesis processors are designed to
perform text-to-phoneme conversions so most words of most documents can
be handled automatically. As an alternative to relying upon the
processor, authors may choose to perform some conversions themselves
prior to encoding in SSML. Written words with indeterminate or ambiguous
pronunciations could be replaced by words with an unambiguous
pronunciation; for example, in the case of "read", "I will reed the
book". Authors should be aware, however, that the resulting SSML
document may not be optimal for visual display. list end nesting level 1



"Good design is accessible design." 
Please note our new name and URL!
John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
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.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/
<http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/>