5 ms·

Multilingual accessibility seems to be a niche within a niche. I'm bilingual but I seldom read mixed-language content. And even when I do I wonder how often the

by simias 6y ago

Multilingual accessibility seems to be a niche within a niche. I'm bilingual but I seldom read mixed-language content. And even when I do I wonder how often the author can/bothers to include the markup for it. If I write "ceci n'est pas du français" here for instance it'll remain untagged. I think the only websites where you can reliably expect the text to be tagged correctly are dictionaries and the like, where it can be done unambiguously and at scale (wiktionary seems to do it for instance: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coin ). In these case it seems like it could genuinely be useful. I've also looked at a few language learning apps (such as Duolingo) and none of them appear to use the lang attribute at all, even though it seems like it would be a perfect use case for it. I guess my point is that I'm not sure it's fair to blame a format that strives to be minimalist for having such a shortcoming for lacking such a very specific feature. Of course if you're a blind linguist you might have a very different opinion on the subject...

madeofpalk 6y ago
Just to be really clear here - accessibility isnt a "niche". People being able to use software (which presumably is what gemini is about??) is important for everyone, obviously. Imagine saying accessability hardware - like corrective lenses - is niche.
- grosswait 6y ago
  Except it currently is even if it should not be. The number of people that know how to make documents or websites 508 compliant is surprisingly low
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    Accessibility in the web standards and specifications isn't a niche, even if most implementations don't bother.
    - zamadatix 6y ago
      How so?
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  By "niche" here, we mean affecting very few people, I think? Then "accessiblity" in general is not niche, it effects everyone or almost everyone. But "accessibilty" is a broad concept, applying to all sorts of different unrelated needs. Vision impairment, cognitive differences, mobility needs, etc. Some of them effect more people than others. Some of them will be "niche", effecting few people. it is just a fact, right? It is faulty logic to say that because "accessibility" effects everyone, every single accessibility accomodation is also therefore of use to everyone. It's not so. How much need is there for multi-lingual screen-reading? I have no idea. It's obviously not universal -- I don't need it for instance, although I may need other kinds of accessibility attention -- but there may be lots of need for it! But we can't prove it one way or another just from language games around the general concept of "accessiblity". Whether developers ought to accomodate even niche accessibility needs is a separate ethical or practical argument.
  - arbitrage 6y ago
    you seem to be confusing "any" with "all". it would be nice to have more accesible interfaces for everyone. helping one person doesn't mean you fail to help everyone, in fact, helping one person in terms of accessibility generally has the effect of helping everyone. we're asking for some access. not all the access. scoped properly, it doesn't seem to be that insurmountable of a development goal, honestly.
    - jrochkind1 6y ago
      > in fact, helping one person in terms of accessibility generally has the effect of helping everyone. How does facilitating multilingual screen-reading help someone who is neither multilingual nor uses a screen-reader? How can it possibly help everyone? (like literally 100% of people, you are suggesting?) What am I missing?
      - danShumway 6y ago
        - better client displays (allowing a user client to switch out fonts based on the language, for example) - better support for users who are not multi-lingual (a client could try to auto-translate sections that are not in the user's native language) - better search capabilities (find me all documents that contain a French passage) - better voice-assistant support (if a document is being read out loud for any reason, it would be nice to be able to handle multiple languages well. This also combines with the auto-translate capabilities above.) Basically, all of the reasons why Gemini includes a "lang" attribute in the first place, except recognizing that parsers and clients want to be able to make use of that on a section-by-section basis rather than purely at the document level. Sometimes documents are big and expand across multiple languages. It's just a bad abstraction in general to assume that each document would only have one language type[0]. Documents/books in the real world don't work that way, and a document format that can't accurately represent a giant portion of classic literature isn't a very good general-purpose format. [0]: yes, technically Gemini allows you to specify multiple top-level languages, but that's not useful for anything. If I'm parsing a document, I don't want it to tell me "hey, there's some French in here somewhere, good luck!" Tell me where it is.
- simias 6y ago
  A quick internet search tells me that between 50 and 74% of adults (depending on the source) need some for of vision correction. That's very much not niche. Also it's a pretty bad example because very rarely do you need to worry about "corrective lense accessibility", except maybe for things like VR helmets. A better example would be things like wheelchair accessibility for instance, which is indeed very much not implemented everywhere. To be clear I'm not saying that it's a bad idea to implement accessibility features, It's actually quite commendable. I just feel like in practice it's a lot of additional work to get it right and even then it may not do much good at all. Again, while the "lang" attribute is technically supported by HTML, I struggle to find places where it's used in the wild, even in places where it doesn't seem like it would be technically difficult to do it (like dictionaries and language learning websites). If I was a gemini developer I'd definitely listen when people complain about bad accessibility, but I would also take the time to understand how people deal with things like multilingual content in practice and how to make it easier, because clearly at the moment "lang=" is not it.
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    > A quick internet search tells me that between 50 and 74% of adults (depending on the source) need some for of vision correction. That's very much not niche. That's my point :) > Also it's a pretty bad example because very rarely do you need to worry about "corrective lense accessibility", except maybe for things like VR helmets. Ahh, but what corrective lesnses points to is degregation in eyesight. So ways to make viewing/experiencing content _without_ glasses is definitely a concern to between 50%-70% of adults.
    - leesalminen 6y ago
      I’ve been wearing glasses full time for 25 years and have never wished a website was designed for me to use without glasses. Ever.
      - madeofpalk 6y ago
        On the other hand, my parents have the font size turned up on their phones because their eyesight degraded with time. I imagine, within time, my eyes will fail more and that'll be me.
- efsavage 6y ago
  Also, accessibility numbers are almost always measured very low because people who need those affordances aren't even attempting to use it, since so much software ignores it. Years ago when browsers let you lock font sizes, I heard many times from both designers and usability "experts" alike, "well, it's not a big deal nobody ever changes the font anyways", not realizing their own self-fulfilling prophecies. I've always loved that the Kindle, even with such a simple use case as reading a book, supports so many ways to see it and interact with it, so even people without vision or motor problems can use it the way they like best.
- computeruser000 6y ago
  Fair in general, but for this example accessible writing is maybe more the issue - whoever made the content should avoid mixing languages if they want to be accessible.
- CoolGuySteve 6y ago
  I'm not necessarily a fan of your tone, seems pretty shrill. But at Apple we were well aware that accessibility features like closed captions were often used by people with no disabilities. We would add stuff knowing that all sorts of people would find uses for it. I can easily imagine a language tag would also be useful for filtering out a German-language gemini for instance. This was a double edged sword however. Like with closed captions/subtitles, we knew that many people using them that had hearing issues were older and also likely had out of date glasses prescriptions. But this didn't stop the AppleTV designers from lowering the contrast of the font by displaying it over a transparent background, lowering the font size, using Helvetica instead of an accessible font, and removing the positional text feature that indicated who was speaking. And in typical Apple style, there was no option to make the text more legible. All of these choices were made to appease people without disability who were using the feature for whatever reason. I didn't like it. So I guess what I'm saying is, accessibility features are good for all sorts of reasons but don't lose sight of the much, much smaller group of users who require the feature in order to use the product at all.
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    > I'm not necessarily a fan of your tone, seems pretty shrill. I think it is important to be honest and upfront when we talk about accessability in software because I've seen so many times when developers and product owners dismiss it entirely. I really want to stress the point that thinking about accessebility as a niche is exclusionary and unethical. I think about my time working at Net a Porter - UK upmarket online fashion retailer - where I brought up some accessability concerns especially around their terrible in-house captcha and it was dismissed as "they arent our target market" which is so blanetly untrue, but all stems from this myth that accessability is only for a small group of users. > don't lose sight of the much, much smaller group of users who require the feature in order to use the product at all. The people who need to use captions/subtitles are not a "much smaller group". I think about foreign language media, where i need the subtitles (like when I watched Dark on Netflix), or even primarily English media but has some forign language (I watched Lost recently - there's a fair bit of Korean and Arabic in that). Or even when you're watching TV around someone who's sleeping. Everyone needs "accessability", and if you don't now, you will eventually.
- buttercraft 6y ago
  > Just to be really clear here - accessibility isnt a "niche". This is uncharitable. They were specifically talking about multilingual accessibility. You responded to something they didn't write.
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    I specifically responded to the "niche within a niche" comment, which I interpreted as referring to multi-lingual documentments as a niche within the niche of "accessibility" in general.
    - timknauf 6y ago
      I read “niche within a niche” as referring to multi-lingual accessibility within the ‘niche’ of Gemini.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  > People being able to use software (which presumably is what gemini is about??) is important for everyone, obviously. Yes, and a minority of those users are visually impaired, hence it is a niche. Maybe you considered "niche" to mean "preference" or "novelty"? " niche, adjective denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population. "

by simias 6y ago

madeofpalk 6y ago

Just to be really clear here - accessibility isnt a "niche". People being able to use software (which presumably is what gemini is about??) is important for everyone, obviously. Imagine saying accessability hardware - like corrective lenses - is niche.

grosswait 6y ago
Except it currently is even if it should not be. The number of people that know how to make documents or websites 508 compliant is surprisingly low
- Symbiote 6y ago
  Accessibility in the web standards and specifications isn't a niche, even if most implementations don't bother.
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    How so?
jrochkind1 6y ago
By "niche" here, we mean affecting very few people, I think? Then "accessiblity" in general is not niche, it effects everyone or almost everyone. But "accessibilty" is a broad concept, applying to all sorts of different unrelated needs. Vision impairment, cognitive differences, mobility needs, etc. Some of them effect more people than others. Some of them will be "niche", effecting few people. it is just a fact, right? It is faulty logic to say that because "accessibility" effects everyone, every single accessibility accomodation is also therefore of use to everyone. It's not so. How much need is there for multi-lingual screen-reading? I have no idea. It's obviously not universal -- I don't need it for instance, although I may need other kinds of accessibility attention -- but there may be lots of need for it! But we can't prove it one way or another just from language games around the general concept of "accessiblity". Whether developers ought to accomodate even niche accessibility needs is a separate ethical or practical argument.
- arbitrage 6y ago
  you seem to be confusing "any" with "all". it would be nice to have more accesible interfaces for everyone. helping one person doesn't mean you fail to help everyone, in fact, helping one person in terms of accessibility generally has the effect of helping everyone. we're asking for some access. not all the access. scoped properly, it doesn't seem to be that insurmountable of a development goal, honestly.
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    > in fact, helping one person in terms of accessibility generally has the effect of helping everyone. How does facilitating multilingual screen-reading help someone who is neither multilingual nor uses a screen-reader? How can it possibly help everyone? (like literally 100% of people, you are suggesting?) What am I missing?
    - danShumway 6y ago
      - better client displays (allowing a user client to switch out fonts based on the language, for example) - better support for users who are not multi-lingual (a client could try to auto-translate sections that are not in the user's native language) - better search capabilities (find me all documents that contain a French passage) - better voice-assistant support (if a document is being read out loud for any reason, it would be nice to be able to handle multiple languages well. This also combines with the auto-translate capabilities above.) Basically, all of the reasons why Gemini includes a "lang" attribute in the first place, except recognizing that parsers and clients want to be able to make use of that on a section-by-section basis rather than purely at the document level. Sometimes documents are big and expand across multiple languages. It's just a bad abstraction in general to assume that each document would only have one language type[0]. Documents/books in the real world don't work that way, and a document format that can't accurately represent a giant portion of classic literature isn't a very good general-purpose format. [0]: yes, technically Gemini allows you to specify multiple top-level languages, but that's not useful for anything. If I'm parsing a document, I don't want it to tell me "hey, there's some French in here somewhere, good luck!" Tell me where it is.
simias 6y ago
A quick internet search tells me that between 50 and 74% of adults (depending on the source) need some for of vision correction. That's very much not niche. Also it's a pretty bad example because very rarely do you need to worry about "corrective lense accessibility", except maybe for things like VR helmets. A better example would be things like wheelchair accessibility for instance, which is indeed very much not implemented everywhere. To be clear I'm not saying that it's a bad idea to implement accessibility features, It's actually quite commendable. I just feel like in practice it's a lot of additional work to get it right and even then it may not do much good at all. Again, while the "lang" attribute is technically supported by HTML, I struggle to find places where it's used in the wild, even in places where it doesn't seem like it would be technically difficult to do it (like dictionaries and language learning websites). If I was a gemini developer I'd definitely listen when people complain about bad accessibility, but I would also take the time to understand how people deal with things like multilingual content in practice and how to make it easier, because clearly at the moment "lang=" is not it.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  > A quick internet search tells me that between 50 and 74% of adults (depending on the source) need some for of vision correction. That's very much not niche. That's my point :) > Also it's a pretty bad example because very rarely do you need to worry about "corrective lense accessibility", except maybe for things like VR helmets. Ahh, but what corrective lesnses points to is degregation in eyesight. So ways to make viewing/experiencing content _without_ glasses is definitely a concern to between 50%-70% of adults.
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    I’ve been wearing glasses full time for 25 years and have never wished a website was designed for me to use without glasses. Ever.
    - madeofpalk 6y ago
      On the other hand, my parents have the font size turned up on their phones because their eyesight degraded with time. I imagine, within time, my eyes will fail more and that'll be me.
efsavage 6y ago
Also, accessibility numbers are almost always measured very low because people who need those affordances aren't even attempting to use it, since so much software ignores it. Years ago when browsers let you lock font sizes, I heard many times from both designers and usability "experts" alike, "well, it's not a big deal nobody ever changes the font anyways", not realizing their own self-fulfilling prophecies. I've always loved that the Kindle, even with such a simple use case as reading a book, supports so many ways to see it and interact with it, so even people without vision or motor problems can use it the way they like best.
computeruser000 6y ago
Fair in general, but for this example accessible writing is maybe more the issue - whoever made the content should avoid mixing languages if they want to be accessible.
CoolGuySteve 6y ago
I'm not necessarily a fan of your tone, seems pretty shrill. But at Apple we were well aware that accessibility features like closed captions were often used by people with no disabilities. We would add stuff knowing that all sorts of people would find uses for it. I can easily imagine a language tag would also be useful for filtering out a German-language gemini for instance. This was a double edged sword however. Like with closed captions/subtitles, we knew that many people using them that had hearing issues were older and also likely had out of date glasses prescriptions. But this didn't stop the AppleTV designers from lowering the contrast of the font by displaying it over a transparent background, lowering the font size, using Helvetica instead of an accessible font, and removing the positional text feature that indicated who was speaking. And in typical Apple style, there was no option to make the text more legible. All of these choices were made to appease people without disability who were using the feature for whatever reason. I didn't like it. So I guess what I'm saying is, accessibility features are good for all sorts of reasons but don't lose sight of the much, much smaller group of users who require the feature in order to use the product at all.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  > I'm not necessarily a fan of your tone, seems pretty shrill. I think it is important to be honest and upfront when we talk about accessability in software because I've seen so many times when developers and product owners dismiss it entirely. I really want to stress the point that thinking about accessebility as a niche is exclusionary and unethical. I think about my time working at Net a Porter - UK upmarket online fashion retailer - where I brought up some accessability concerns especially around their terrible in-house captcha and it was dismissed as "they arent our target market" which is so blanetly untrue, but all stems from this myth that accessability is only for a small group of users. > don't lose sight of the much, much smaller group of users who require the feature in order to use the product at all. The people who need to use captions/subtitles are not a "much smaller group". I think about foreign language media, where i need the subtitles (like when I watched Dark on Netflix), or even primarily English media but has some forign language (I watched Lost recently - there's a fair bit of Korean and Arabic in that). Or even when you're watching TV around someone who's sleeping. Everyone needs "accessability", and if you don't now, you will eventually.
buttercraft 6y ago
> Just to be really clear here - accessibility isnt a "niche". This is uncharitable. They were specifically talking about multilingual accessibility. You responded to something they didn't write.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  I specifically responded to the "niche within a niche" comment, which I interpreted as referring to multi-lingual documentments as a niche within the niche of "accessibility" in general.
  - timknauf 6y ago
    I read “niche within a niche” as referring to multi-lingual accessibility within the ‘niche’ of Gemini.
Chris2048 6y ago
> People being able to use software (which presumably is what gemini is about??) is important for everyone, obviously. Yes, and a minority of those users are visually impaired, hence it is a niche. Maybe you considered "niche" to mean "preference" or "novelty"? " niche, adjective denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population. "