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Use of the LANG attribute

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From: Swan, Henny
Date: Feb 15, 2005 11:21AM

Hello All,

We're having some discussions internally regarding use of the language attribute in sites. Generally it is clear when to mark up text that is not the natural language of the page however there is a slight grey area that is not so easy to define. This is best illustrated by looking at an online supermarket. How far do we go in regards to marking up food stuffs and foreign brands as French, Italian and so on?

Some of it seems quite clear. Phrases in recipe's that are clearly foreign are obvious candidates for being marked up. For example a cooking technique given in French, that is not assimilated into the English language.

Other words you can argue do not need to be marked up due to their common usage in the English language for example "Champaign". To have this marked up in French may actually mislead a screen reader user in terms of how it is pronounced. In addition to this brand names could be left as English, and not marked up, as people may only be accustomed to hearing them pronounced with an English accent.

Words that are clearly anglicised could therefore be considered exempt. One benchmark we are looking at is checking to see if it is in the Oxford Dictionary. Other words that could be considered exempt come from languages that are written in a different script like, for example, chow mien, the Chinese for stir-fry noodles (the Chinese pronunciation is nothing like the English one and would be barely recognisable).

But what of the grey area words like, Orecchiette (a type of pasta), or panna cotta, which people may not know. Or how about "Cuvee Royale Blanquette de Limoux Brut" does all of it get marked up, some of it or none of it?

What we are really trying to do is establish some kind of base guideline for establishing when a word is identified as a foreign language and when it is not. Any input, thoughts, ideas or comments would be great.

Many thanks, Henny




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Henny Swan
Website Accessibility Consultant
T: 020 7391 2044
E: <EMAIL REMOVED>


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