RE: Hawaiian Diacritics

We have similar with te reo in New Zealand. My advice in terms of compliance is to always mark-up the change of language (other that where the te reo is issued in NZ English as an accepted part of NZ English – e.g I wouldn’t mark a word or phrase in a predominently English sentence where that word or phrase is commonly in use by English speakers

So “Kia ora, This is John and his whanau” wouldn’t get individually marked but a paragraph of te reo or an unusual word would.

Irrespective of the availability of a synthesiser the compliance is, to me , clear. If the language changes you signal it. What the AT does with that info is up to the AT but at the least a user could have the system set to change voice  giving an indication that they are no longer reading English text.
Kevin

From: Pyatt, Elizabeth J <ejp10@psu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, 11 May 2022 8:28 am
To: Ryan McCalla <rmccalla@hawaii.edu>
Cc: w3c-wai-ig <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Hawaiian Diacritics

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization.

I think until a Hawaiian TTS voice engine is developed, your assessment is correct that pronunciation won't be accurate. Are you aware of any speech technologists developing that? It's a gap in some languages. Is there someone in your linguistics department who would have any information?

FWIW - I usually use something like <p lang="haw"> or <em lang="haw"> (if the word is italicized). This is the recommended way to add language tags. The screen reader either supports it or it doesn't.

But even if a language is not supported now, I bet it could be in the future. So adding tags is not a bad idea and it will make the document WCAG compliant.

Hope this helps.
Elizabeth

P.S. This is the language technology portal for Welsh. It represents a model of minority language technology support.
http://techiaith.cymru/speech/text-to-speech/?lang=en






Kevin Prince  
Product Accessibility & Usability Consultant
 
  
Foster Moore 
A Teranet Company 
  
 
E kevin.prince@fostermoore.com 
Christchurch 
fostermoore.com 
On May 10, 2022, at 3:34 PM, Ryan McCalla <rmccalla@hawaii.edu<mailto:rmccalla@hawaii.edu>> wrote:

Thanks to all who already provided input on this discussion.

So, is it necessary to code each word with aria-labels and the proper escape sequence for each Hawaiian letter, even though screen readers will never pronounce the words correctly? This seems like it would be a difficult task for pages with more than a few Hawaiian words, especially for content creators.

Would inserting a <lang=”haw”> before each word/paragraph be enough? Is that even necessary?

If the Hawaiian content is not marked up at all, is it still ADA compliant even though screen readers can’t pronounce the words properly?

Thanks,

-Ryan M.

From: Ryan McCalla <rmccalla@hawaii.edu<mailto:rmccalla@hawaii.edu>>
Sent: Friday, May 6, 2022 9:50 AM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Hawaiian Diacritics

Hello,

What are the best practices around accessibility and mixed language web content? I know screen readers do not pronounce Hawaiian words correctly. However, my team at the University of Hawai‘i is trying to compile best practices and recommendations with regards to the use of Hawaiian language in digital media. Our Communications Office has put together some recommendations<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hawaii.edu%2Foffices%2Fcommunications%2Fstandards%2Fhawaiian-language-considerations%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cejp10%40psu.edu%7Cdd293ccc6d0f4b010c6208da32bc9a54%7C7cf48d453ddb4389a9c1c115526eb52e%7C0%7C0%7C637878083031660711%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=PtqzZRNFwP1nn%2FqvL4lG2fQgO5toRWoEbxbJguNWX5Y%3D&reserved=0>. I think we just want to verify that these are indeed the best practices for making the Hawaiian language accessible on the web.

We appreciate any input on this issue.

Thanks,

Ryan McCalla (he/him/his)
IT Specialist, Client Service and Operations Center
Information Technology Services
University of Hawai‘i
rmccalla@hawaii.edu<mailto:rmccalla@hawaii.edu> | 808-956-2170

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D.
Accessibility IT Consultant/Lead Trainer
Penn State IT Accessibility
Office of the Deputy CIO
accessibility@psu.edu<mailto:accessibility@psu.edu> (General accessibility questions)
ejp10@psu.edu<mailto:ejp10@psu.edu>

25 Shields Building
University Park, PA 16802
https://accessibility.psu.edu