10 August 2006

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced that it plans to extend the language supported in web accessibility standards.

Following a recent workshop on Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), the consortium concluded that expanding the range of supported languages is "critical" to future development.

SSML improves digital accessibility for blind or visually impaired users, by enabling their computer system to translate text into spoken word.

The group devised a new initiative to update SSML 1.0 to include "under-represented" languages, including widely-spoken languages such as Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Russian and Hebrew, and other Indian and Asian languages.

By improving the SSML, web accessibility through devices such as PCs, mobile phones and other devices could help to bring the internet to "every corner of the globe", the organisation believes.

Andrew Updegrove of Gesmer Updergrove LLP, a US expert on technological law and web accessibility, recently praised the W3C for taking steps to combat the lack of accessibility for speakers of non-Western languages with disabilities.

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