The global dialect of accessibility: making the web work in your language

Transcript

2 August 2015

Roberta: There are several reasons why web accessibility becomes more complication for non-English speaking users. Dr Scott Hollier joins us today to follow up on his findings from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, whilst teaching a web accessibility course to 22 students. While the work went well, it became quickly apparent that there were a number of issues relating to the way in which language was supported by the tools and how those tools interacted with the web. Welcome, Scott.

Scott: Thank you, Roberta, great to be here.

Roberta: Now, is it harder for non-English speakers to use assistive technologies?

Scott: Well, it is and there's a combination of factors that can make it that bit more tricky. One is the number of languages that a screen reader supports, so that might be limited and it might not cover the language that someone is speaking. Also, sometimes the developers don't put the right information in the code of their web pages, which means screen readers might do something a bit odd and that can be a factor. There is also the fact that sometimes the operating system might be in English but the screen reader might be set to something else, like Arabic. While that doesn't necessarily cause the problem for the web, it might cause a problem for just generally getting around the operating system. So there's a combination of factors there that can make it quite difficult for people with disabilities, non-English language.

Roberta: What screen readers support other languages?

Scott: Well, the good news is that there are a number of screen readers that do support a lot of languages and just to give some examples we have the NVDA screen reader that supports 43 languages. That's quite a good level of support. Voiceover on the Mac supports 30 and other screen readers support varying others. JAWS supports quite a lot, as well. So there are screen readers that do support quite a lot of languages and whilst on one level it's nice that there is quite a large support, on the other hand, if your language is the one that it doesn't support then that can be really tricky.

Roberta: What happens if the computer's operating system isn't in the same language as the screen reader?

Scott: It should be okay in terms of web browsing because that's set by the code in the page but in terms of just general consistency it can make things a little bit trickier and what happens is the screen reader will probably not pronounce things correctly, getting around the computer. Most operating systems have language packs or multiple language supports, so we would recommend that people do make sure that the screen reader and the operating system are set to the same language and then you will have that consistent experience as you are using that screen reader.

Roberta: Maybe so but is there any way to fix a website if a screen reader doesn't read out words correctly?

Scott: Well, if you find that most of the time you go to the web and things read out correctly but on one or two sites things aren't pronounced correctly, then what's probably happened there is that the developer hasn't put the one line of code about declaring what the language is of the page. In Australia we do get a little bit lazy because we assume that things are always in English and we often don't declare that they're in English. So people from other countries have interesting effects with their software. So in that case the best thing to do is just to email the developer or contact the developer and say, "Can you put that one line of code in your pages so that my screen reader reads things out properly?"

Roberta: So it is it likely to get better in the future?

Scott: I think it will. I mean, we have seen a steady increase in the number of languages supported across screen readers. So as we were saying, with NVDA, for example, which is the free open source screen reader, it's great that there's been community involvement and support to get that up to that 43-language figure. So I'm quite confident that given the web is a global medium and we live in a global society that we'll continue to see improvements for other languages on the web.

Roberta: Now, for tips to make the web work better in your language and information on the Professional Certificate in Web Accessibility, you can call Media Access Australia on 02 9212 6242 or you can email info@mediaacess.org.au. Thank you, Scott, for all of that today.

Scott: Thank you.

Roberta: I have been speaking with Dr Scott Hollier from Media Access Australia and he has been talking about a web accessibility in other languages. You can visit the website of www.mediaacess.org.au or, as Scott said, you can email him direct, scott.hollier@mediaaccess.org.au. That phone number again, 02 9212 6242. Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.

Go back to The global dialect of accessibility: making the web work in your language page