RE: RE 3.1 proposal - first half

Hi Yvette, Ineke,

  Yes - I think for your language - words would be looked for a pieces if
not found as units.  

Also - I wasn't saying that this would be true today (since the guideline
hasn't even been released yet).  I was saying that if the government wanted
to require that its pages be accessible (like ours has) that such words that
are invented would have an attached definition.  (rather they would be
required to). That's all. 

 
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 Yvette Hoitink
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 3:11 PM
To: 'Ineke van der Maat'
Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: RE 3.1 proposal - first half


Ineke van der Maat wrote:
> hoi gregg
> 
> Thanks you for your answer
> 
> You wrote:
> >In your country I would think that many pages, including government 
> >pages
> that describe services etc, would use language that might be 
> in a dictionary.
> - If not then they would be exempt too.
> ->> If so then special words that the government used to describe its
> services
> >might be in a separate dictionary that is in the list of 
> dictionaries 
> >(and
> >supplements) associated with the page
> 
> i show an example from the current governmentpage 
> http://www.regering.nl
> 
> I  only can find 3 news items in the homepage and some links
> 
[snip]
> *Bedrijvenloket* levert 220 miljoen minder lasten op Een 
> *bedrijvenloket* met elektronische formulieren vermindert de 
> administratieve lasten met 220 miljoen euro. Een eerste 
> versie van het loket is al operationeel. Dat geldt ook voor 
> het *basisbedrijvenregister* lees verder...
> 
> 
> The words between * * are words that are not in the so called 
> Green book and must have  been created by officials of the 
> ministeries in the last weeks for writing new laws.
> 
> There is no dictionary of the words officials in the Hague 
> create. Everybody knows they always create new words and 
> nearly nobody is able to exactly interprete them. Don't ask 
> me why. "Haguean language" we call it.
> 
> In the website of the government does exist a register of keywords
> (trefwoordenregister) but the new words are (still?) not in it.
> 
> greetings
> Ineke van der Maat

Ineke raises a point that I have made in the past as well: Languages like
Dutch support on-the-fly generation of words by sticking them together. Like
Ineke says, the government is notorious for coming up with new words that
are more difficult than they need to be. These words will not be in a
dictionary. 

However, I don't really think this is a problem necessarily. Using a
dictionary, the meaning of those words can almost always be determined by
looking up the first part, then the second, etc, because people who speak
Dutch know the grammatical function of the combination (the first part fills
the role of an adjective to the second part). It sounds more difficult than
it really is, one word that Ineke highlights would translate to "basic
company register" but using the same grammatical construction as in Dutch it
would become 'basiccompanyregister'.

As long as words constructed like this are not used in an unusual way, a
definition is not required so it would meet the success criteria.

If words are totally invented, like in Ineke's example of fantasy poems, a
definition would be required. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to
understand and will be confusing for people with learning disabilities. At
level 3, I think we can require authors to provide a definition in that
case. It could be a part of the challenge for the author, to create artistic
descriptions that capture the essence of the invented word and do it justice
:-) Ineke, do you have a URL of your fantasy poems site? It might make an
interesting real-world example for some of the issues we're dealing with. 

Yvette Hoitink
Heritas, Enschede, the Netherlands
E-mail: y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl
WWW: http://www.heritas.nl

Received on Saturday, 28 May 2005 03:34:34 UTC