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womble
Posts: 5588
Joined: 3/14/2005
From: Living on the edge
Status: offline
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Web accessibility and translation - 9/13/2005 16:30:49
I wasn't sure if this was strictly an accessibility question, but as in context it does apply to accessibility/equal opps I thought it was best suited here.
One of my responsibilities at work (none web stuff) is putting together an equalities action plan which combines the requirements of a number of govt guidelines and codes of practice on good practice and highlighting what we're doing right, what we're not doing, and what we need to do to fix it.
One of the things that's come up is that we're supposed to provide all our info in formats to reach all groups, including disabled people and ethnic minorities, and this includes the web site.
I've just had a look at the WAI guidelines and this appears to come under WAI Priority 3:
quote:
Provide information so that users may receive documents according to their preferences (e.g., language, content type, etc.)
At the moment we're claiming WAI-AA (though I've just run the site through Bobby and according to that we're failing it). Seems to comply with the govt regs, we need to achieve WAI Priority 3 (or at least part of it).
There's a link on the site to translate using Google translate, but that only does European languages through the site (the regs say we have to do 'local community languages' which include Chinese, Urdu Punjabi and Polish). I tried the English to Chinese on Google and for some reason it's saying the URL's not valid. 
Is the ability to translate something to do with the character encoding they're using (charset=iso-8859-1) or will it need a separate version in each of the languages?
Strictly speaking this isn't my problem as I'll just do the action plan, hand it over, and give IT the bad news about what needs to be done, but as I'm seeing the head of IT on Thursday about accessibility anyway I thought I'd try and find out in advance which is the best way to go.
_____________________________
~~ "A cruel god ain't no god at all" ~~
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caz
Posts: 3546
Joined: 10/10/2001
From: Somewhere south of Chester, UK
Status: offline
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RE: Web accessibility and translation - 9/13/2005 17:30:03
Google translation English to Chinese(Simplified) worked for me, in Fx.
A lot of Local Authorities do provide translated versions of their pages, but a quick look at the guidelines for UK Govt web sites revealed this,
quote:
Illustrated Handbook for Web Management Teams (html)
2.4 Building in universal accessibility + checklist
Publishing date: May 2002
2.4.2.1 Key audiences to remember
"Non-English users
Many people in the UK do not use English as their first language. Extra care should be taken to ensure that the English used on a web page is clear and simple to understand."
Cabinet Office
Have a look at the TOC for that section and there is some general guidance for e-services for local authorities amongst other bodies.(Downloads).
Character encoding is required for different languages and you can get the info at the W3C.
Character encoding
_____________________________
Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will dance, or more on your keyboard.
Cheshire cat. www.doracat.co.uk
I remember when it took less than 4hrs to fly across the Atlantic.
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caz
Posts: 3546
Joined: 10/10/2001
From: Somewhere south of Chester, UK
Status: offline
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RE: Web accessibility and translation - 9/13/2005 18:38:39
I used to live in Huddersfield which has a large Urdu speaking population and this is what they have done for leaflets, see the footer.
Kirklees
The main site though is a revelation, standards compliant and also has Polish and Welsh! They appear to offer the translations as pdf downloads, which would get over your character encoding difficulties. Pretty good IMO.
Kirklees Council site
< Message edited by caz -- 9/13/2005 18:49:54 >
_____________________________
Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will dance, or more on your keyboard.
Cheshire cat. www.doracat.co.uk
I remember when it took less than 4hrs to fly across the Atlantic.
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Printable Version 
). It doesn't go into any detail about the web side of things but as we do everything else in the local community languages I'm figuring we ought to see if we can do the same with the website as well (at the moment it does Spanish, French, German, and Italian I think, which is great, but we don't have large Spanish, French, German or Italian communities). 
