I tend to have strange ideas when working late at night, so if any of the following is wrong, non-standard or just plainly dumb, I beg your pardon in advance.
Assumptions: â it has to be done with valid HTML only; â it must comply with the acessibility guidelines; â it must understandably (i.e. verbosely) explain the font issue; â every 'visual' browser can at least display ASCII; â you have enough space for a 100x25px image.
For readability's sake I'll think of an English page with a graphical link to its Chinese equivalent (I'm ignoring on purpose the difference between a language and the writing system it uses) as seen by a desktop browser with images on and no usable Chinese font, the same browser with images off, a text-only browser and a screereader.
1)For desktop browsers without a proper font for Han and images on I'd make an image with "Chinese version" in both writings, as in:
a) layer 1: the background; layer 2:an English "Chinese" contrasting with the background; layer 3: its Han equivalent with a degree of transparency, so that both written layers are readable or at least recognizable even if overlapping; or
b) an animated GIF showing the English text in one frame and the Chinese text in the next (nowadays every browser with images on can display a GIF89a).
2)A desktop browser with images off and a text-only browser would be (relatively) happy with this code:
<a href="han.html" hreflang="zh-Hans" title="Most pages...-éæå..." rel="alternate" charset="utf-8">
<img src="image.gif" alt="Most pages...-éæå..." title="Most pages...-éæå..." width="100" height="25">
</A>
as long as the alt and title attributes contain an explanation of the font issue. Alas, a screen-reader expects, and the accessibility guidelines require, any change in language to be properly marked up, and we can't mix languages inside the same element. So this is what I thought up (think Rube Goldberg):
3)
<img src="image.gif" alt="" title="" width="100" height="25" usemap="#map">
<map name="map" id="map">
<p lang="en">
<a href="han.html" hreflang="zh-Hans" title="Most pages..." rel="alternate" shape=rect" coords="0,0,100,13">
</p>
<p lang="zh-Hans">
<a href="han.html" hreflang="zh-Hans" title="éæå..." rel="alternate" shape=rect" coords="0,12,100,25">
</p>
</map>
This is basically an image map with an unusual, but valid sintax for clickable zones. The image's alt attribute is empty because the image contains no additional information besides what's in the related map element. I might have used two plain old area elements, but the hreflang attribute is not allowed there. The real world value of hreflang is zero or thereabout (no support that I know of), but it's still required in WCAG. HTML 4.01 allows for hreflang in links only, and those are allowed in maps if contained in block-level content, so what we have here are two overlapping clickable areas (with the same target)within an image, each with its title 'tooltip' in the same language as inherited from the containig block element, all this without requiring lots of screen estate (adjust the image size to what you have available, the 'tooltips' will take care of themselves).
Again, sorry if there's something amiss in these night ramblings. The nearest coffee is still hours away...
djn
Lachlan Hardy wrote:
Well, this will teach me not to send messages to the list without proper sleep. I'll try and explain the situation a bit better:
The Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified) was encoded in UTF-8 and is displayed as UTF-8. It shows up fine for me in Firefox. It shows up fine in IE, if the code specifies the change of language. It shows only blocks in IE if simply inputted without particular language specification. I have not installed language packs etc, but I'm not fussed about that. My testing shows that the Chinese will work fine for those who want to see it
My concern (and that of my client) is for those people who do not have Chinese (of either variety) installed on their machine and don't want to. If an typical user comes upon a section of the page that doesn't display in readable fashion, their assumption is likely to be that the site does not work. It is always my fault, not theirs. I'm attempting to find a way around that
Currently, main content pages in Chinese contain a special blurb in English to explain that this is a Chinese page, how to see it if they want to and provide a link back to the English version in case they don't. I need to be able to either explain to users that the unreadable (for them) content is Chinese, or show it as Chinese consistently
Hopefully, that is a bit clearer, seeing as I've had some coffee now
Cheers, Lachlan
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