Proposed checkpoint for language support

DOCUMENT IN REVIEW:
   http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/WD-WAI-USERAGENT-19990210/

Hello,

Charles McCathieNevile has proposed [1] the the UA guidelines
address support for natural language as an accessibility issue.
This proposal is lent support by the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines [2], which contains two natural language-related 
checkpoints - 6.1 and 6.2. Checkpoint 6.1 is a Priority 1
that reads:

   6.1 Clearly identify changes in the (natural) language 
       of a document's text.

What form would UA checkpoints for natural language support
take? 

1) One area seems to be related to descriptions and captions
   of audio and video, but this will be covered in Guideline
   5. by two proposed checkpoints (one to choose from among
   available captions and descriptions for video, one for
   audio). These checkpoints were added by consensus at
   the 17 Feb teleconf.

2) Another checkpoint might mirror that of the Web Content
   Guidelines: Notify the user when markup indicates a 
   change in natural language. In HTML, this is done
   with "lang", in XML, I believe it's "xml:lang". This
   feature could be turned on or off.

Other areas of concern for natural language?

 - Ian

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/1999JanMar/0237.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-WAI-PAGEAUTH-19990226 
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/1999JanMar/0206.html
-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) 
Tel/Fax: (212) 684-1814 
http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs

Received on Saturday, 6 March 1999 15:51:01 UTC