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Re: Use of the LANG attribute

for

From: Robinson, Norman B - Washington, DC
Date: Feb 15, 2005 11:52AM

The actual RFC gives examples of purpose and use.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1766.txt.

As a practical matter, I think it should be used for content
external/embedded from the web page you are on, such as an audio file or
video so you can determine what language it is without understanding
that language. I simply wouldn't identify the world as a foreign
language for the online shopping application you reference. As a
customer I want to send my five year old to order "Duck La'Orange" and
expect it to be a BRANDING or PRODUCT selection title, not understand it
means "orange duck" (if that is, in fact, what it means ;)

Also, I understand you were specific to LANG attribute, but I wanted to
also mention some of the other language dependent codings that might
affect your discussion:

The DOCTYPE is for marking your content target. E.g., <!DOCTYPE HTML
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">. The DOCTYPE Language
(listing of possible codes:
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/iso639a.html) Specifies the public
text language, the natural language encoding system used in the creation
of the referenced object - the default web content.

Note, to keep this relevant to this lists purpose, this can be important
to assistive technologies in general. I.e., Web Accessibility Initiative
checkpoint 3.2 (http://www.w3.org/WAI/wcag-curric/sam29-0.htm).

Regards,

Norman Robinson

-----Original Message-----
From: henny.swan [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 1:20 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Use of the LANG attribute



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




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


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