[Athen] Chinese characters/language

[Ron]

There is a Chinese version of NVDA, as well as JAWS. Which if memory serves
me right are UUEncode based.  It might be worth contacting the NVDA project
to discuss source content requirements.

Ron Stewart

On Thursday, January 29, 2015, Howard Kramer <howard.kramer at colorado.edu>
wrote:


> Thanks Teresa – that’s a very big help.

>

>

>

> -Howard

>

>

>

> *From:* athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu

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

> *On Behalf Of *Teresa Haven

> *Sent:* Thursday, January 29, 2015 7:45 AM

> *To:* Access Technology Higher Education Network

> *Subject:* Re: [Athen] Chinese characters/language

>

>

>

> Hi, Howard.  Spanish, French, German, Russian, Greek, etc. all use

> alphabets, writing systems that represent a set number of sounds with

> specific characters, and those characters don’t have any inherent meaning.

> Chinese and Japanese use pictographs, where each character has a specific

> meaning, and there are thousands of characters in common use.  ASCII is an

> American coding system, and includes a very few basic Chinese/Japanese

> characters (like the days of the week, “hour”, “minute”, and “yen”.

> Unicode has a much broader range of character codes available in the CJK

> (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) subset, but I’m not sure how well a screen

> reader would be able to interpret and pronounce any given character, since

> pronunciation can change depending on context (and language – Chinese and

> Japanese may look a lot alike, but they are not mutually intelligible).  A

> Japanese or Chinese native screen reader would probably be better equipped

> for those details, but an American screen reader might not be equipped to

> handle them at all, even if the webpage is coded in Unicode rather than

> images.  For a language placement exam here in the US, I’d first explore

> the capabilities of the American screen readers in use, then consider

> alt-tagging all the Chinese graphics if the Unicode won’t render properly.

> Of course, whatever method is used in the placement exam should probably

> carry over to the course materials as well…

>

>

>

> Hope this helps,

>

> Teresa

>

>

>

> Teresa Haven, Ph.D.

>

> Accessibility Analyst, Northern Arizona University

>

> Co-Chair, AHEAD Standing Committee on Technology

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> *From:* athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu

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

> *On Behalf Of *Howard Kramer

> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 28, 2015 9:22 PM

> *To:* Access Technology Higher Education Network

> *Subject:* [Athen] Chinese characters/language

>

>

>

> Wink, Susan,

>

>

>

> This may be a question most in your areas of expertise. How difficult is

> it to present Chinese text (don't ask me which dialect - it's all Greek to

> me) on a web page that can be read by a screenreader? I've been evaluating

> some language placement exams here at UCB. The Spanish, French and German

> were rendered with "real" (i.e. ascii) text - as I would have expected.

> Even the Russian exam used ascii characters. The Chinese was rendered with

> graphics. Are there no ascii codes for Chinese?

>

>

>

> Thanks,

>

> Howard

>

>

>

>

>

>

> --

>

> Howard Kramer

> CO-PI - UDUC

> *Promoting the Integration of Universal Design into University Curricula*

> (UDUC)

> Lecturer, Cont. Ed - Evening & Cred Admin

>

> 303-492-8672

> cell: 720-351-8668

>

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