Specialist Task Force 287:
User-oriented handling of multicultural issues in multimedia communications
Who we are:
Team Leader: Michael Andrew Pluke
Team Members: Françoise Petersen
Derek Pollard
Bianca Szalai
NEWS:
"The final deliverable from
STF287 was published in January 2007 and can be obtained
from here by
entering the text "EG 202 421" in the "Search for" box..
On the 1st June,
STF287's ideas were presented and discussed at the
Localization World conference in a "Praxis Session" entitled:
"Personal Localization: Localize for the Individual"
This proved to be an ideal
opportunity to introduce STF287's latest thinking to many sections
of the localization community. The response was encouraging and some
useful contacts, ideas and offers of assistance were obtained.
On the 30th May 2006,
a presentation was given at the panel "The Car as Sensor and
Service Provider" during the 6th International Workshop on
Applications and Services in Wireless Networks (ASWN)
www.aswn2006.org. It highlighted the importance of providing
services and information in a language that matches the needs of a
user who is driving a car. The presentation used scenarios that were
based on the work of STF287. These illustrated:
-
the use of electronic
traffic aids with traffic information in the user's preferred
language and language;
- support in emergency
situations.
These events follow on from the
success of the STF287 Workshop:
"Enabling the Delivery of Localized Information and Communication
Services"
This was held on the 20 March
2006 at the 20th International Symposium on Human Factors in
Telecommunication. This provided a good opportunity to share
STF287's ideas with the User Experience community in the
telecommunications industry. The workshop gave an enthusiastic
response to our approach. It also expanded our understanding of how
the significant cultural differences that exist between some
societies and those of Europe can have profound influences on the
ways that products and services need to be localized.
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 more information,
please contact our STF: multicultural@etsi.org
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;
- 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.
Standards bodies that have been
directly approached are:
- Joint Meeting / Workshop held with the CEN/ISSS Cultural Diversity
Focus Group (CDFG), 16th-17th March 2006, Sophia Antipolis, France;.
- ISO/IEC
JTC1 SC35 WG5 on "Cultural and Linguistic Adaptability and User
Interfaces Requirements" meeting, 15th-17th February 2006, Berlin,
Germany;
- LISA
Executive Round Table and poster presentation at the LISA Forum
Europe, 7th-11th November 2005, Zurich,
Switzerland;
- CEN/ISSS
Cultural Diversity Steering Group (CDSG) Meeting, 20th October
2005, Brussels, Belgium;
- Dublin Core "Localization and Internationalization" Working Group at
the DC-2005 Conference, 13th September 2005, Madrid, Spain;
- ETSI
User Group Meeting (UG#24), 30th August 2005t, ETSI, France;
- ISO/IEC
JTC1 SC35 "User Interfaces" and, in particular, their working group
WG5 on "Cultural and Linguistic Adaptability and User Interfaces
Requirements" Meeting, 8th-9th July 2005, Madison, USA.
The plans and work of the STF
were also presented and discussed at:
- A Conference Session entitled "Personal Localization:
Localize for the Individual" at the Localization World
Conference, 1st June 2006, Barcelona, Spain;
- Paper "Cultural inclusion in information and communications services"
presented at the 20th International Symposium on Human Factors in
Telecommunication, 21st March 2006, ETSI, Sophia
Antipolis, France;
- Workshop
""Enabling the Delivery of Localized Information and
Communication Services" held at the 20th International Symposium
on Human Factors in Telecommunication, 16th-17th
March 2006, ETSI, Sophia Antipolis, France;
- Mobile HCI-05 Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and
Services Conference, 19th-22nd September 2005, Salzburg, Austria,
see:
http://www.etsi.org/pressroom/Previous/2005/2005_10_hf.htm ;
- E -COMM
LINE 2005: 6th European Conference on
e-Business/e-Work/e-Learning/e-Government/e-Democracy/e-Health and
online sServices, and their influence on economic/social environment
and contributions to ERA, 19th-20th September 2005, Bucharest,
Romania.
Other contact has
been made with academics and with representatives of organisations
providing services such as Emergency Services and Call Centres with
which there are significant issues relating to the handling of
language and culture.
The insights obtained from these contacts have been invaluable and
they have been taken into account in the preparation of the current
draft of the
ETSI Guide. There are still many aspects of the consultation
that we have been doing that are yet to be worked upon and
incorporated into the document.
You can take a look at
a leaflet we have produced about our work and
a poster that was presented at the MobileHCI'05 conference.
Note: this information is based upon STF working assumptions.
The views expressed do not necessarily represent the position of ETSI in this
context.
Last updated: 2010-02-18 10:21:48