[Athen] Are Accessible Multilingual/Multi-directional EPUBs supported today?

[Ron]

Please let us know your outcomes. Multilingual support is something I have
been interested in for quite some time, and something that was very high on
customer wish lists when I ran Dolphin USA. I would also try it on a full
size system. I have some concerns the resource overhead will be pretty high
and that may break fluidity of audio rendering.

Ron

On Monday, September 29, 2014, Brian Richwine <blrichwine at gmail.com> wrote:


> Thanks Ron,

>

> We haven't tried XHTML or even HTML. I'll give that a shot. We should have

> thought of that... if we can get the file to open in Safari on his iPhone,

> then I'm reasonably sure VoiceOver with Safari will handle the language

> changes.

>

> Thanks again, Ron!

>

> On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Ron <ronrstewart at gmail.com

> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','ronrstewart at gmail.com');>> wrote:

>

>> Unfortunately not that I am aware of. Aside from this issue is that

>> iBooks is actually an Apple proprietary reading platform. The student may

>> not have an option to move to a real computer reading platform, and also to

>> Windows.

>>

>> Have you tried converting to XHTML instead of to ePub, not sure if it

>> will work either but since the tagging is already there it may be worth a

>> try.

>>

>> Ron Stewart

>>

>>

>> On Monday, September 29, 2014, Brian Richwine <blrichwine at gmail.com

>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','blrichwine at gmail.com');>> wrote:

>>

>>> Hi,

>>>

>>>   Does anyone have knowledge of an accessible EPUB reader on

>>> iOS/VoiceOver (or any platform for that matter) that supports multilingual

>>> access, including a mix of directional languages? If it could work on iOS,

>>> I suppose we'd support any other file format that would be accessible and

>>> could be converted from a Word document.

>>>

>>>  We have a student that is blind, a native Arabic speaker, and does not

>>> want to use desktop screen-reading software since his iPhone natively

>>> supports Arabic TTS.

>>>

>>>  We've been converting his materials by editing in Word documents, and

>>> then converting them to the EPUB format. The student opens the materials in

>>> iBooks on his phone.

>>>

>>>  This has been going splendidly for books that are in all one language.

>>> However, the student is studying languages and many of the materials he

>>> needs make extensive use of two or more languages.

>>>

>>>   We've checked the underlying HTML, metadata files, etc. in the EPUBs

>>> we are creating. They seem to have the proper language markup around the

>>> changes (span elements with lang attributes as expected). However, none of

>>> the EPUB readers (accessible and with TTS) for iOS are handling the

>>> language changes.

>>>

>>>   It appears that for iBooks, at least, that this is currently by

>>> design. The iBooks Asset Guide speaks of "The language of your book" (as in

>>> singular language, pg. 19 of the iBooks Asset Guide 5.1 R2).

>>>

>>>   To complicate it, many of the texts switch between left-to-right

>>> languages and right-to-left languages. Often many times in a given line.

>>>

>>> Thanks!

>>>   Brian Richwine

>>>

>>>

>>>

>>> Manager, UITS Assistive Technology and Accessibility Centers

>>>

>>> Indiana University – Bloomington / Indianapolis

>>>

>>> http://iuadapts.iu.edu

>>>

>>> (812) 856-2757 [Direct Line]

>>>

>>> (812) 856-4112 [Office Number]

>>>

>>> brichwin at iu.edu

>>>

>>>

>>>

>>

>> _______________________________________________

>> athen-list mailing list

>> athen-list at mailman13.u.washington.edu

>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','athen-list at mailman13.u.washington.edu');>

>> http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/athen-list

>>

>>

>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20140929/5b564bda/attachment.html>