HigherGroundPyatt (PPT) - Accessing Higher Ground
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Making Non-English Content More Accessible Elizabeth J. Pyatt Penn State accessibilityweb@psu.edu Who Am I? ¿Quién Soy? Pwy yw fi? Accessibility Instructional Designer Researching accessibility since 2001 Webmaster http://accessiblity.psu.edu/ Foreign Language Owner of multiple linguistic degrees Still teach occasional course Webmaster http://symbolcodes.tlt.psu.edu/ Outline Language Tags Switches screen reader pronunciation Can adjust spell checker also Symbol Support Unicode Standard Tweaking Screen Readers Non-Western Character Legibility Entering characters Classifying Language Support Western Languages Spanish, French, Italian, German… Support built in to U.S. JAWS/VoiceOver Includes pronunciation files for Western languages (e.g. Spanish, French, Italian) Non Western/Exotic Languages May need localized version of screen reader Will likely include English support Open source community? Unusual technical symbols Support varies, but may be enhanced First…Language Codes ISO-639 ISO = International Standards Org 639 = 2-letter language tags Examples en (English), fr (French), ja (Japanese) es (Spanish), de (Dutch), zh (Chinese) eu (Basque), cy (Welsh), ga (Irish) hr (Croatian), sq (Albanian)…. Why “Language Tag”? Documents and sections of docs should by tagged by language My dog is black (lang=“en”) Mi gato es negro (lang=“es”) Language tagging allows Accurate screen reader pronunciation And enables accurate spell checking And sorting through translated versions And other important uses… Also…3 Letter Codes ISO-639-2 & ISO-639-3 Maintained by “SIL” More languages – tons! pgl: Primitive Irish (found on Ogam stones) Use only if no 2-letter code is available (e.g. Zuni=“zun”) Lookup demo http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/ Lists ISO-639…ISO-639-3 Regions Too! Codes can have national variants en-US vs en-GB vs…. Changes screen reader accent Makes “colour” OK in spell checker es-MX vs. es-ES vs. es-AR la paz ‘peace’ = “pahs” (MX) or “pahth” (ES) zh-CN vs. zh-TW vs. zh-HK (Chinese) Different script! fr-FR vs. fr-CA de-DE vs. de-CH (Swiss) pt-BR vs pt-PT Wikipedia Language Editions Wikipedia URLs organized by language code es.wikipedia.org = Spanish chr.wikipedia.org = Cherokee ang.wikipedia.org = Old English Language Tag Demo JAWS/NVDA Audio Demo Note how Spanish pronunciation changes VoiceOver Need to manually switch between language voices (Ugh!) Can get VoiceOver to speak English like Sophia Vergara (great party trick!) Audio Demo Audio Demo Spanish in JAWS HTML Lang Tags HTML Header <html lang=“en-us”> In case your JAWS user isn’t an English speaker Tag P (or DIV…) <p lang=“fr”>Parlez-vous français?</p> Tag word <b lang=“es”>negro</b> means “black” B or I OK if NOT emphasizing content Or you use SPAN Non-Western Languages on JAWS Not written in English alphabet E.g. Chinese, Russian, Arabic… Not read in U.S. JAWS Partial Support VoiceOver Install language plugin Look for non-U.S. JAWS distributors http://www.freedomscientific.com/forms/Contact_Us .asp?ID=Dealer Language Tags Word/PPT Office 2010 (Win) Review tab, Language Group Set Proofing Language Office 2011 (Mac) Tools : Language Demo Mathématique PDF Language Tag Acrobat Pro XI Document: In Properties Window File : Properties Advanced tab Language menu PDF: Tagging a Section Done in Tags panel Right click tag to edit May need to insert custom codes Voiceover Voice Offerings Lots of good choices BUT LANG tag not recognized Sofia Vergara effect when Spanish voice reads English with “theek assent” Non-English must be downloaded can be hard in a lab Audio Demo Next: Tech Symbols Tech Symbols = ,ə,ŋ, ∲,∑,⊃,¥,₹,₩,,₪, 😄,😡 ≠ MathML (or ChemML) Phonetics, currency, emoji, weather/astronomy, logic ≠ MathML or ChemML Although you can use this tech for one line expressions in a pinch. First: Encoding and Symbols What’s Encoding? A scheme in which a number is assigned to a character (e.g. ASCII) ASCII Examples 65=A 66=B 67=C 49=1 50=2 97=a 98=b 99=c =‘ 40=( 41=) 32=‘ ’ 91=[ 38=& Unicode All characters in all scripts Schema 0-127 = ASCII 128-255 = Additional Western char 255-911 = Extra Roman letters 912-1039 = Greek 1040-1328 = Cyrillic… …. Up to 16^6 (16.7 million) potential spaces http://www.unicode.org/ Why Encoding Matters Ensures character consistency Consider the Wingding fonts A B C D E F (hand gestures) Actually “A B C D E F” in Unicode But do screen readers read symbols aloud? VoiceOver – yes for most JAWS – Probably need to tweak symbol file NVDA – Not much luck Unicode also important for Captions of non-English video Handwriting recognition beyond English Emoji support in general Transmitting content over LMS Twitter & Facebook JAWS Symbol File eloq.sbl in settings List of symbols supported by JAWS A little skimpy IM-NSH-O Can add symbols Freedom Scientific has good starter download http://www.freedomscientific.com/Support/TechnicalSu pport/Bulletin/1066 Add more U+20B9=Rupee symbol of India Update eloq.sbl Requires admin level access Location Changed between JAWS 13 & 14 http://accessbility.psu.edu/jawssymbols Jaws Demo of Symbols Audio 1 Default .sbl file Audio 2 Adjusted .sbl file VoiceOver Pronunciation VoiceOver has better symbol support But…. Can add to dictionary in VoiceOver Utility VoiceOver Utility Pronunciation Legibility of Non-Western Characters May need to bump up font sizes 24 Point: 汉语 / 漢語 & हिन्दी 30 Point: 汉语 / 漢語 & हिन्दी Traditional (serif) vs non-traditional fonts Default fonts from Apple/Microsoft are typically sans-serif Serif could be better n ŋ ɲ ɳ ñ (Lucida Grande) n ŋ ɲ ɳ ñ (SIL Charis) Entering Characters Standard Numeric codes Option or ALT codes Consider also Alternate keyboard drivers Activate in Control Panel/System Prefs Can make symbols more available Text Expander/Breevy (Best Customization) Demo here Where to now? Beware English-only mindset Does your accessibility product support Spanish? other languages? Active open source communitirs Wish list Would like to see pronunciation file standards Most languages have more regular orthographic rules Easier dictionary access More Unicode support!
