Specialist Task Force 287:
User-oriented handling of multicultural issues in multimedia communications

Who we are:

NEWS:

What we do :

This EC/EFTA funded STF produced the following deliverable ETSI Guide:

• EG 202 421: Human Factors (HF); Multicultural and language aspects of multimedia communications

Read our Terms of Reference

STF287 has published a whitepaper on the LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association) website entitled:

"Cross cultural communication: How can you deliver what the user really wants?"

This gives a good insight into some of the main ideas that have emerged from our work.
 

How to contact us:

If you would like to contribute to or follow discussions with a wider group then please use our mail list:
HF_Multicultual_Communication@LIST.ETSI.ORG

You are very welcome to sign up to the mailing list here.

Finally, we have a weblog that:

- gives news about our progress;
- points to key resources associated with our work;
- highlights interesting articles that others have recently published;
- provides you with an opportunity to make comment.
 

Purpose of the STF:

One of the key eEurope 2005 objectives is "to give everyone the opportunity to participate in the global information society". By seeking to remove or reduce the cultural barriers that can exclude people from such participation, the action proposed in our work strongly supports the achievement of this aim. Citizens coming from a country where the culture and language are different to their host country and citizens who have various disabilities could easily be excluded from accessing broadband delivered eGovernment, eLearning, eHealth and eBusiness services unless the proposals developed during this initiative are followed. The enlargement of the European Union will encourage its citizens to travel to an increasing number of countries each with their own national cultures and languages. Tourists and immigrant workers who speak non-European languages will increase within Europe and the range of cultures and languages that must be supported in European services will also need to grow. In practice it will not be possible to present services in variants suitable for every cultural variation within Europe, so this initiative proposes various means to ensure that the most appropriate version of a service is always delivered to each service user.

The eEurope 2005 Action Plan states that "... broadband enabled communication, in combination with convergence, will bring social as well as economic benefits. It will contribute to e-inclusion, cohesion and cultural diversity". This will only be realised if communication and information services are able to present content to users in a form that they are able to clearly understand. This not only includes presenting information in a language that the user can understand but also that the output can be easily accessed by the user (e.g. services that rely heavily on visual content may frequently be unusable by blind users) and it is in a format suitable to the person’s culture.

Services should ideally be able to support the context dependent cultural and language preferences of a wide range of users, such as:

• people communicating with people or accessing services in other countries;

• a person visiting or residing in a country where the language is not their native language;

• an individual who only speaks a minority language of a country;

• someone who only has a limited vocabulary in their own language;

• someone who lip-reads;

• a user of sign language;

• a person using the Blissymbols system;

• businesses dealing with customers or organisations in other countries.

The social benefits and cultural diversity claims in the objectives of eEurope 2005 can only be fully realised if the recommendations developed by this initiative are implemented. This work will propose ways in which everyone can be offered a cultural variant of a service best matched to their preferences and language skills, even when their preferred cultural variant is unsupported. Achieving this will require a means to determine a person's range of cultural preferences and language abilities, a standard way to store them (e.g. in a profile), and a means for services to access them so that the most culturally compatible service can be provided to the user. Guidance will also be given for the incorporation of country-specific legal requirements into business ICT provision.

Delivering appropriate content to all users will bring direct benefits to service users irrespective of culture and language. This will create many opportunities for businesses to create the necessary information and communication services and to provide multi language/cultural variants of the content.

The eContent Programme has an objective of "Promoting cultural diversity and multilingualism … and increasing the export opportunities for European content firms, and in particular SMEs, through cultural and linguistic customisation" (eContent Final Report for the Mid-term Evaluation of the eContent programme). One of the premises of this work is that it is very difficult to achieve this objective in the case of truly pan-European services, or even for services in multi-lingual/multi-cultural societies without a means to ensure that users are delivered a service that meets their own cultural needs with minimal (or no) user effort.

Time plan for the work:

The activity commenced in April 2005 and was completed in December 2006.

Latest activities:

Since the STF started its work, a priority has been to make contact with other bodies carrying out work on cultural and language aspects of ICT products and services to identify how our work relates to and complements their activities. To date, each time this has been done, the reaction has been very positive. In all cases there has been a mutual perception that their work contributes to what we are trying to achieve and that what we are doing only strengthens the effect of their activities.