Re: I18N last call comments on User Agent AccessibilityGuidelines1.0

Hmmm. Just a thought - how shoud we andle different sign languages? In
Australia, the UK, and the USA we speak and write the same language (more or
less - it is readily mutually comprehensible at any rate). But where a signed
equivalent is provided (the news channel I used to watch on TV in Melbourne
did this, and it is a reasonable possibility for the web now, although not
common) how do users distinguish whether it is BSL, ASL or Auslan, which are
not really mutually comprehensible to anything like the same extent? Surely
the obvious mechanisms are those used for i18n.

(I'm not sure where this eads us, except that I think we should be very
careful about deciding that language is not an accessibility issue).

Charles McCN

On Sat, 15 Jan 2000, Ian Jacobs wrote:

  "Martin J. Duerst" wrote:
  > 
  > At 08:35 1999/12/06 -0500, Ian Jacobs wrote:
  > > "Martin J. Duerst" wrote:
  > > >
  > > > Dear Working Group,
  > > >
  > > > Below please find the last call comments from the Internationalization
  > > > (I18N) WG on the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
  
  Hi Martin,
  
  Some followup on your comments. 
  
  The first comments you make refer to a checkpoint, since deleted,
  on rendering according to natural language. At the face-to-face
  meeting in December, we decided to delete the checkpoint since
  we felt that "proper I18N rendering" was not an accessibility
  issue. Refer to issue 140.
  
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/1999/12/ftf-19991209#issue-140
  
  In fact a comment you made after some clarifications seems to
  suggest the same opinion:
  
     > But I'm not sure how much that makes sense in view of
     > accessability.
  
  Thank you for your detailed comments about handling I18N
  markup and HTTP information. This should be integrated
  into a set of I18N guidelines for user agents.
  
   _ Ian
  
  -- 
  Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
  Tel/Fax:                     +1 212 684-1814
  Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
21 Mitchell Street, Footscray, VIC 3011,  Australia

Received on Sunday, 16 January 2000 11:36:34 UTC