Re: accessibility supported questions

On 4/1/09 11:25 AM, "Christophe Strobbe"
<christophe.strobbe@esat.kuleuven.be> wrote:
> For example, a Maltese user who does not know any foreign languages can only
> access content in Maltese and use software that is localised for Maltese.
> If there is no accessible user agent (including plugins) that is
> supported by AT that is available in Maltese (assuming that there are
> user agents available in Maltese), than Maltese policy makers would better
> not include that technology in their list of accessibility-supported
> technologies (if they were making one).

I think Malta has one bigger obstacle...

> If we took PDF as an example, we would see that the Adobe Reader is
> available in all the official langauges of the EU except Irish and Maltese
> (see [ReaderVersions]), but there might be accessible PDF readers
> in Irish and Maltese provided by someone else than Adobe.

Unless I'm mistaken, there is no screen reader that supports Maltese. I
think the same is true for Irish, though a cursory look shows there's been
work on a Gaelic TTS engine. Still, until that work is done, any movement in
accessible technology (that is, not just web accessibility) in those
languages is blocked by the absence of suitable screen reader technology.

-
m

Received on Wednesday, 1 April 2009 18:50:58 UTC