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RE: alt text in 2 languages?

for

From: Sean Keegan
Date: Apr 22, 2004 11:05PM

As far as the two big screen-readers are concerned, Window-Eyes and JAWS
5.0 will support the lang attribute for those language packs installed
on the computer (installing the additional language packs occurs when
you are installing either Window-Eyes or JAWS).

About the only languages I have not tested this with is German,
Portuguese, and Finnish (Spanish, French, and Italian worked for me).

Take care,
Sean

Sean Keegan
Web Accessibility Instructor
High Tech Center Training Unit for the
California Community Colleges
408.996.6044

-----Original Message-----
From: Jukka K. Korpela [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 12:13 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: RE: alt text in 2 languages?


On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, John Foliot - WATS.ca wrote:

> I have been told that the latest version of JAWS now
> also supports the LANG attribute and will do the switch (although I
> have not personally verified this).

That's good news. Can anyone confirm this and give more details, like
the repertoire of languages supported?

> In practical terms, adding LANG attributes is not difficult, and is
> forward compatible - and IMHO a good idea to implement at the
> development stage (as opposed to having to retrofit a site 24 months
> from now...).

It depends. Using lang="..." for <html> and for large blocks of data,
like block quotations in another language, is very easy. Using language
markup for _all_ changes of languages, as required by the WAI
recommendations but not applied even on WAI pages themselves, is quite
complex, both theoretically, both theoretically and in practice.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/


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