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How should text-to-speech handle ruby annotations like furigana in Japanese or pinyin in Chinese so screen reader users get the intended experience?
We just published a new W3C draft note from the Internationalization Activity: Text-to-Speech Rendering of Electronic Documents Containing Ruby: User Requirements
This explores diverse reading strategies across writing systems and defines essential user needs.
We just dropped two super useful articles:
- Addresses look wildly different around the world (order, details, even postal codes). This one explains the chaos and how to build forms/apps that don't frustrate international users.
- Easy guide to JavaScript's built-in Intl API, with real examples for formatting dates, numbers, currencies, etc., the right way for any language/region.
🔗 Addresses: https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-address-formats
🔗 Intl guide: https://www.w3.org/International/articles/intl/index
Translation can drastically alter text length: English strings may expand by 200-300% in languages like German or French, or shrink in Asian languages. This @webi18n video shows where long, unbreakable words can break layouts and cause design issues.
🎬 https://youtu.be/sgpZri88-qo
Let text flow naturally, avoid fixed widths, separate content from presentation, and plan ahead your database fields! #i18n
Have you ever resized your browser and seen text reflow? Behind that simple effect lies a world of linguistic and technical complexity—especially in languages without spaces.
In this video, @xfq, @w3c @webi18n lead, explores how different writing systems handle text wrapping, from common methods to fascinating edge cases that shape the truly “World Wide” Web.
🎬 A must-watch for web #developers, designers, publishers, and anyone curious about #language and #technology: https://youtu.be/Pk2S2VXVFuI
I18N GAP PROGRESS: Kashmiri Yeh glyphs in naskh fonts
Noto fonts no longer display the circle below KASHMIRI YEH in final and isolate forms of non-Nastaliq fonts. This includes, for example, Noto Naskh Arabic, Noto Sans Arabic, and Noto Kufi Arabic.
FOR REVIEW: Number, currency, and unit formatting
Hardcoding formats is a brittle and unsustainable approach. Fortunately, the web platform provides robust, standards-based solutions to navigate this complex landscape. This article will guide you, step-by-step, through leveraging JavaScript's built-in Intl object to effortlessly adapt your web pages to varying international number, currency, and unit formats.
https://w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/questions/qa-number-format.en.html
See the blog post at https://www.w3.org/blog/International/2025/10/16/for-review-number-currency-and-unit-formatting/
New translation into Chinese:
字符编码：核心概念 (Character encodings: Essential concepts)
https://www.w3.org/International/articles/definitions-characters/index.zh-hans.html
Thanks to Fuqiao Xue for providing this translation.
Is your website missing out on one of #HTML’s easiest yet most powerful tools? The lang attribute takes just seconds to add, but it makes a massive difference for #accessibility, SEO, and how your content displays. @webi18n
In this video, @xfq, who leads @w3c's #Internationalization activity, breaks down exactly what the language attribute does and demonstrate why skipping it can have real consequences. @webi18n
Dreaming of a global website? Translation alone won’t cut it!
In this video, @xfq, @w3c's Internationalization lead, breaks down the fundamental concepts of making the web truly global. @webi18n
🎬 Watch: https://youtu.be/-m9KHI1Fg0w
Dive into the key distinctions between internationalization (#i18n) and localization (#l10n), and explore what truly matters beyond language, from character encoding and right-to-left designs to culturally adapted formats for dates, numbers, and names.
I18N GAP FIXED: Line-breaking now works for Javanese & other SE Asian scripts in all major browser engines.
Javanese, Balinese, and some other scripts can't wrap at word boundaries because those often lie in letter stacks which must be kept together. They therefore wrap at orthographic syllable boundaries. Thanks to Norbert Lindenberg, Unicode now supports this type of line-breaking.
Gap report: https://www.w3.org/TR/java-gap/#issue40_line_breaking
Article about line breaking: https://www.w3.org/International/articles/typography/linebreak.en.html#sec_se_asia2
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