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w3c / naur

https://w3c.github.io/naur/
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Communicating in a Language that the User Needs: User Need 9 question #19

Open RealJoshue108 opened 3 years ago

RealJoshue108 commented 3 years ago

Filed by @jasonjgw:

User Need 9: A user with a learning or cognitive disability needs to communicate with the system in a symbol set supported by a particular augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) assistive technology.

Q: What is the system requirement here? Is it an unsolved research question? Can we refer to related W3C work in this area?

JWJPaton commented 3 years ago

I was chatting to a Speech and Language Therapist over the weekend and got her opinion and she said that AAC would technically not be a natural language (natural languages evolve organically whereas AAC symbol sets are deliberately designed).

It potentially raises two questions: 1, Are user needs for AAC covered elsewhere or would leaving them out of this document create a gap in the user needs standards? 2, Would we see other technically non-natural languages such as Esperanto, Klingon or Elvish as being out of scope?

I doubt any requirements would need to reference Klingon et al but if we wouldn't consider them as out of scope then that indicates a looser definition of natural language that could include AAC.

If user needs for AAC are not covered elsewhere then it feels like we should still include them with a sentence or paragraph somewhere to soothe any pedants. It does also feel like user needs for HCI via AAC would be deserving of it's own user needs document though and we may need to import some specialist knowledge to write that.

jasonjgw commented 3 years ago

Doesn't the fact that the language is used for interpersonal communication qualify it for purposes of our work? Its being the product of a design process doesn't seem material to whether or not it should be supported within the interface to provide accessibility. However, there are, apparently, multiple AAC symbol systems and it isn't clear what the access requirement would be here.