by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2013/11/06 07:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2013/11/06/10460573.aspx
The other day,I blogged I would prefer their accessibility story be more accessible, you know? ♿♿♿ and right round and reader Charlie commented:
Internationalization and world-readiness is all about accessibility — not a different matter, really. Except that it is the minority of English speakers who suffer least and don’t permanently feel the need for adequate facilities. The effect of being excluded from social life is very much the same though.
I realized I was going to have to get into the whole issue in a separate blog.
This blog you are reading right now, in fact!
I treat these two issues as being different because my group does, but they are more related than people really give them credit for.
They are really the same issue on a different axis!
World-Readiness is a type of Accessibility based on language and/or market, because one can be just as blocked by being able to read and understand something that is in the wrong language or incorrect cultural conventions as they can be by more conventional accessibility issues like using a screen reader if you are blind, if you don't understand the language or regional preferences. How serious the issue is depends on the specific scenario, of course...
I'm both cases, you are just as blocked from understanding what is being communicated
Of course the problems are treated differently because bridging these two very different gaps require two different types of subject matter experts (SMEs), and the fact that I am both kinds of SME is just one of the many hazards of being me, because I have been Sorting it all Out by trying to sort BOTH if them out in this Blog since the end of 2004 and although one of them is embraced in my work, the other is really just more kind of tolerated, you know? 😏
Perhaps it is ironic being so involved with keyboards in general and MSKLC in particular, since MSKLC and the On Screen Keyboard (OSK) are once again related to both.
I'm surprised I'm not schizophrenic trying to manage both of them sometimes...
John Cowan on 6 Nov 2013 4:18 PM:
Yes, but do you represent the constituent of the deaf-blind who have no fingers?