Current font technologies and font rendering systems make a distinction between writing scripts that require complex rendering and those scripts that do not. In most cases Latin is treated as a non-complex script. For a range of African and South East Asian languages that use the Latin script, the Latin script needs to be treated as a complex script.
Posted in Web i18n, MPAS, Language enablement, Languages | No Comments »
The W3C website has an article on using CSS 2.1 selectors to apply language specific styling based on the language of an element. This is quite an effective tool for developing websites with multilingual content.
The key drawback to using language specific styling is Internet Explorer’s limited support for CSS 2.1 selectors. Although there are strategies to address Internet Explorer’s deficiencies.
Vicnet’s internal projects may involve one language, five languages or seventy languages. Language specific styling is a useful way to address a range of design issues within websites with multilingual content. this article will provide a brief look at the some of the strategies and techniques we use within our projects.
Posted in Web i18n, Typography | No Comments »
In part 1 I indicated that I would discuss internationalization of Australian Government websites with respect to accessibility by referencing two particular federal government websites. In this article I’ll be discussing the Centrelink and DIAC websites.
Posted in Accessibility, Web i18n | 2 Comments »
In the aftermath of the Community Languages Online report I’ve had time to start teasing out my thoughts on web internationalisation and accessibility as it applies to government information in community languages.
Web accessibility is well entrenched in federal and state governments’ web standards in Australia. Generally web developers understand the need for web accessibility. Government departments and agencies require web accessibility and will make the effort to get their websites to comply with accessibility standards.
This seems to work smoothly in monolingual environments, but there is a fracture point. Looking at Australian government websites, it becomes apparent that key aspects of web accessibility (and its relationship with web internationalisation) is only superficially understood.
In a future post I’ll discuss two particular federal government websites. For the moment I’ll concentrate on my understanding of web accessibility as it applies to content in community languages.
Posted in Accessibility, Web i18n, Languages | 3 Comments »