[Athen] Advice on German foreign language learning for blind student

[Stager, Catherine]

Thanks, Bevi. That's good to know. I'm always learning new things from you!


Best regards,
Cath

Catherine M. Stager
Assistive Technology Specialist
Front Range Community College



From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of chagnon at pubcom.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2023 5:01 PM
To: 'Access Technology Higher Education Network' <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Advice on German foreign language learning for blind student


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Begin quote: "PDF (which we know does not support language switching)"

The PDF/UA-1 standard does indeed support multiple languages and "switching" through the global language setting in metadata (File / Properties), and the local language attribute on selected tagged content.

It's the assistive technologies that fail to correctly process the languages. Or the content creators who fail to tag their content with the language attribute.

Don't blame the file format for this shortcoming.

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From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Stager, Catherine
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2023 12:39 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Advice on German foreign language learning for blind student

I just worked with Pearson to get a student access to their German textbook in ePub via VitalSource (Thanks, Doug Hacker).  Hopefully, it is fully marked up properly, but be forewarned that Pearson's default for language textbooks through AccessText is PDF (which we know does not support language switching).

As far as OCR, I always found Abbyy Finereader got better results for languages.
Best regards,
Cath

Catherine M. Stager
Assistive Technology Specialist
Disability Support Services - Assistive Technology
Pronouns: she/her/hers.
Leave a message or text Cath (720) 336-1245
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From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Mosley, Leigh
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2023 6:49 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Advice on German foreign language learning for blind student


EXTERNAL MAIL: athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>: Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Please contact your college IT Help Desk if you have any questions
Hi Adina,

What a great question! In my experience, I found that VoiceOver seems to recognize most languages and pronounce them correctly right out of the box.  NVDA and JAWS require you to first download a specific voice for that language and to make sure your speech synthesizer is set to Windows OneCore for NVDA or Vocalizer Expressive for JAWS.  But then they all work well, as long as the page is coded with the correct <lang> tag.

Unfortunately, I have yet to find an online resource with multiple languages on the same page that correctly uses <p lang=  or  <span lang= tags to show the screen reader when to switch back and forth.  It's extremely frustrating because it basically renders all online foreign-language teaching resources useless with a screen reader.  Occasionally VoiceOver figures it out on its own, but not at all reliably.

Also, I'm guessing that once you get into more obscure languages (my only relevant experience here being with ancient Greek), just because something is coded correctly, that still doesn't mean a screen reader can cope with it (i.e. there are no ancient Greek voices to download for NVDA/JAWS and even VoiceOver throws up its tiny hands in dismay).

Please keep us posted, as this is an area of great interest to me.

Leigh

Leigh Mosley
Accessibility Coordinator
University of Tennessee Libraries
1015 Volunteer Boulevard
Knoxville, TN 37996-1000
865-974-0011
lmosley1 at utk.edu<mailto:lmosley1 at utk.edu>
[The University of Tennessee Knoxville logo]


From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Adina Mulliken
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2023 5:55 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] Advice on German foreign language learning for blind student

Hi everyone,
I'm interested in finding out about materials and strategies for a blind student who may want to learn German.   My understanding is the student uses a screen reader but we don't know which one yet.  We don't know if they read Braille.  We don't know what course materials the professor uses yet, but we're trying to begin learning about what might be involved with obtaining and converting appropriate materials.

I understand that popular screen readers can read German.   I've looked through athen listserv's archives and found a few relevant posts, although I probably could have searched further.  I looked on Bookshare and found 74 results came up under foreign language learning materials in German and available in the United States.

Does anyone have additional advice?

Here are the links I found on this listserv in case anyone wants to know

  *   http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/mailman/htdig/athen-list/2019-July/015345.html<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmailman12.u.washington.edu%2Fmailman%2Fhtdig%2Fathen-list%2F2019-July%2F015345.html&data=05%7C01%7Clmosley1%40utk.edu%7Ca3dc6c8af01e4d07546b08db145ec808%7C515813d9717d45dd9eca9aa19c09d6f9%7C0%7C0%7C638126169551302010%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=hR76QCOEOJXMsK8Mq10mxH5IrCTVK2vlpCZfCLCHNVM%3D&reserved=0>
  *   http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/mailman/htdig/athen-list/2019-July/015325.html<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmailman12.u.washington.edu%2Fmailman%2Fhtdig%2Fathen-list%2F2019-July%2F015325.html&data=05%7C01%7Clmosley1%40utk.edu%7Ca3dc6c8af01e4d07546b08db145ec808%7C515813d9717d45dd9eca9aa19c09d6f9%7C0%7C0%7C638126169551458224%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wtweDwsXwvPbPyZuEUDEfH%2FhocIv%2BvJlP37X7%2BzmFDY%3D&reserved=0>
"German contracted Braille for example is just as complex as our grade 2, and though I speak German I read the contractions with great difficulty. This is because I only learned it for a year when I was nineteen so I'm terrible at it.
But reading German by setting my display to use the computer Braille table is easy for me because it is just the alphabet and the special accented letters."

  *    http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/mailman/htdig/athen-list/2019-November/015820.html<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmailman12.u.washington.edu%2Fmailman%2Fhtdig%2Fathen-list%2F2019-November%2F015820.html&data=05%7C01%7Clmosley1%40utk.edu%7Ca3dc6c8af01e4d07546b08db145ec808%7C515813d9717d45dd9eca9aa19c09d6f9%7C0%7C0%7C638126169551458224%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=FLy3p8lZp9L4TWTGQ2vYEARIFHyyX3Y97jVDPRgKx4Y%3D&reserved=0>


Thank you!
Adina

Adina Mulliken
Associate Professor, Librarian Silberman Social Work and Urban Public Health Library
Hunter College, City University of New York
2180 3rd Ave. New York, NY
Phone 212-396-7665
Pronouns she/her
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