Specialist Task Force 300: 

Character repertoires, ordering and assignments to the 12-key telephone keypad - European languages and languages used in Europe

Who we are:

 Latest News:

• A final review and consensus building Workshop has been held on ETSI premises on Wednesday, May 16, 2007.

• The published ETSI Standard DES 202 130 (version 2.1.2) is available here (click to download).

Please contact Bruno von Niman: bruno@vonniman.com or +46 733 66 1234 for any additional information!”

What we do :

We are co-funded by EC/EFTA to produce an expanded ETSI Standard (ES) on Human Factors (HF): User Interfaces; Character repertoires, ordering and assignments to the 12-key telephone keypad for European languages and other languages used in Europe.

Scope of the work

This ETSI Standard will not cover user interface design and implementation specific issues.

Read our Terms of Reference

Why we do it:

Devices with telecommunication functionality represent the largest consumer product segment in the world.
Users must be provided with easy access to communication devices and services. Easy, correct and efficient text input, search and retrieval via the telephone keypad is a basic user requirement. Finding the characters necessary to enter a name in the phonebook, search for a name, write an SMS message or log on to a mobile Internet portal are most common, basic procedures. These cannot be easily performed in a correct and consistent way, as different manufacturers apply different character entry mapping and ordering. This varies sometimes even between devices and applications coming from the same manufacturer!

Europe has approximately 230 indigenous languages - worldwide there are close to 7 000. The largest number of languages presently supported by a specific telecommunications device or service is approaching 50. Cultural and linguistic diversity is one of the key strengths of Europe. However, in ICT, it raises issues that need to be considered and solved in order not to limit access to services, their availability and usability, on the basic as well as more advanced levels.

In order to be able to provide a technology-agnostic, consistent and high-qualitative end user centric solution covering not only all official EU languages but also minority languages and other languages used in Europe, applicable to a variety of terminals with a 12-key keypad, an ETSI Specialist Task Force has been established, to perform the work in close collaboration with other stakeholders.

The previously developed ETSI Standard covering all official EU languages (ES 202 130) has received support from most manufacturers of mobile terminals. Therefore, there is a very fair chance to quickly deploy such an extended standard in product implementations, leading to harmonized access and an improved user experience for many consumers.

The availability of and easy access to all characters used in European languages is considered necessary, in order to enable proper access and cover most basic user needs in the enlarged EU, with regard to our cultural diversity. This benefits not only the consumer but also the society and its’ cultural diversity, taking a step forward towards the achievement of the goals set by the European Commission in the eEurope 2005 Action Plan and other, above mentioned documents.
The development currently performed takes into account work previously performed in ETSI, ITU-T, CEN and ISO/IEC, adapting its results to be optimized for devices and services used and accessed through the 12-key telephone keypad, thereby focusing on telecommunication devices.

The deployment of the present document will enable users to reapply knowledge and previous experience between different ICT devices and services using a 12-key standard keypad array and a display. Control of common functions such as entering of characters and retrieval of text in a certain order will be simplified.
Well-established services which rely on alpha mnemonics (e.g. "800 DOCTOR" rather than "800 362867") will not be influenced as the present document only complement the 12-key keypad standard specifying the assignment of A to Z to the 12-key keypad, see ETS 300 640.

The work is aligned with and partly funded through the European Commission’s initiative eEurope 2005, a program for accelerated uptake and inclusive deployment of new, important, consumer-oriented technologies. (http://europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope).

How we do it

This activity will identify a common assignment and access solution for European characters, complementing ES 202 130, covering all official EU languages.
The main output will be an updated version of ETSI Standard (ES) 202 130 version 1.1.1 covering major minority languages, additional official European languages and other non-European languages used by a considerable number of ICT users in Europe.

Details of our approach and language coverage are available and presented in our draft, ETSI DES 202 130 version 2.1.1 (available below).

Time plan for the work (will be updated with additional details and public Workshop dates): 

Latest downloadable draft version, for comments: