Mobile web in Indian languages and its implementation challenges

1. Mobile web in Indian languages and its implementation challenges Presented by : Swaran Lata Country Manager, W3C India slata@mit.gov.in

2. Mobile Environment • Mobile media has increasingly becoming the preferred medium of communication • Indian Mobile Market is one of the fastest growing – has overtaken China in terms of growth • Usage of Mobile Web is growing besides the messaging services. • In the top 10 list of countries, India moved up, switching spots with Ukraine. [source : http://www.opera.com/smw] 1 2 4

3. Subscriber base of Wireless Operators (in million) as on 31st March 2010 The Wireless subscriber base was 584.32 million as on 31st March 2010 1 190.88 2 The Wireline subscriber base was 36.96 million as on 31st March 2010 Rural Wireless subscriber 4 http://www.trai.gov.in/traiannualreport.asp

4. Quality of Telecom Service Providers in Delhi September 2010 1 2 4 Company Logo

5. Comparison between different Indian language support handsets

6. Mobile VAS in India

7. Mobile Device & MVAS: Messaging: SMS/MMS/Email Mobile Commerce Mobile Advertising Broadcast :Radio/Music Browsing and downloading Gaming Social Networking Mobile Apps: Productivity Tools Location based services Present Near Future

8. VAS CATEGORIES

9. VAS Usage

10. Issues of Mobile Localization Character encoding Presentation Issues Bandwidth & Cost Input Service provider level issues Fonts and Rendering issues

11. Issues for Text entry • Standardized keypad mappings of alphabets from Indian Languages to the 12 keys of the device; • Lack of support for display of fonts • Uniform guidelines for composing and editing of Indian Languages which are highly non-linear in their structure • dictionary support • Support for transliteration and other services

12. Different approaches to English and Devanagari Keypad http://www.hceye.org/downloads/CCUI-Bilingual-Mobile-Phones-Katre-final.pdf

13. Usability Issues Variation in typing in Devanagari as well as in English its keystrokes : • Proposed Solution : • Standardization of Keyboard in : • Physical Layout • Virtual/Layout Scheme http://www.hceye.org/downloads/CCUI-Bilingual-Mobile-Phones-Katre-final.pdf

14. Virtual Keypad- future

15. Language setting of Mobile phone • When you set Hindi as a language in mobile phones , the two mainly problems occurred : • Language dropouts • Use of English terms in Hindi Proposed Solution : Standardization of Terminology http://www.hceye.org/downloads/CCUI-Bilingual-Mobile-Phones-Katre-final.pdf

16. Rendering Issues Problems: • Uneven spacing of alphabets • Distorted shapes of alphabets • Uneven height and width of alphabets • Intersecting or overlapping alphabets • Insufficient leading between two lines • Ambiguous and non-recognizable shapes The word Maharastra type with different Mobile phones : Proposed Solution : • Rasterizar & Layout Engines • Availability of Sakal-bharatiOpen type fonts http://www.hceye.org/downloads/CCUI-Bilingual-Mobile-Phones-Katre-final.pdf

17. Character Encoding In the Mobile technology, the multilingual data handling becomes vital across different layers. Any chosen encoding scheme should consider the following : • The encoding scheme should support all possible characters, character combinations as per Unicode standard. • There should be provision to change languages within single message. • The encoding should be flexible for future Unicode standard.

18. Service providers related Issues

19. Support of Rasterizer engines for display of text Standardization of keyboard Layout CHALLENGES IN MOBILE WEB Availability of Open type Fonts Indian languages layout engines Support of Localization features Common Storage format

20. Mobile Best Practices 1.0 W3C mobile OK Basic Tests 1.0: DDC (Default Delivery Context ) Mobile OK Checker Mobile Web Initiative by W3C Sixty Guidelines to specifies best practices for delivering Web content to mobile devices Test to conform Mobile Web Contents Compliance Minimum Size Possible( page size, image format, screen width, encoding, etc ) Service for Web Sites to Validate Mobile Friendliness

21. Level of Adherence to Best Practices while testing Hindi websites Mobile Compatible websites Mobile non-compatible websites

22. Frequent cause of failures Content format support: must support CSS style sheet 1 Character encoding use: must support UTF-8 as character encoding 2 Measures: width and height must be limited according to mobile screens 3 3 Click to add Title 4 Page size limit: The total size of the page should not exceeds 20 kilobytes 4

23. Frequent cause of failures Image specification size: must specify width and height attributes of an image 5 Non- text alternative: width and height attributes are not specified on an image 6 Measures: must specify alt attribute on images 3 7 Click to add Title 4 Style sheet: sheet must be used as CSS content 8

24. Frequent cause of failures Valid mark up: must validate against XHTML Basic 1.1 9 Nested tables : While most mobile devices support basic tables, nested tables are hardly supported. The layout of a page that contains nested tables is unpredictable on mobile devices and at best unlikely to be the desired layout. 10 3

25. Priority areas of Mobile Web Best Practices in India W3C India will focus on the following subset of Mobile Web Best Practices for Indian languages

26. Priority areas of Mobile Web Best Practices in India(Contd..)

27. Abstract Mobile specification for study OSs Browsers Devices Operators Symbion OS Firefox Micromax GSM - Airtel /MTNL Windows Mobile Opera Samsung CDMA – Tata /Reliance Nokia Nokia Android Android

28. Stakeholders needed for enabling Mobile web in India W3C India Mobile Manufactures Content Developers Mobile Web Initiative in India Service Providers Industry and Research Institute

29. Responsible Bodies in India Telecom Commission(Apex Body) • Department of Telecommunication(DOT) • Policy, Licensing and Coordination matters relating to telegraphs, telephones, wireless, and data services • Promotion of standardization, research and development in telecommunications • Telecom Regulatory Authority of India • To provide a fair and transparent policy environment which promotes a level playing field and facilitates fair competition • Cellular Operators Association of India(COAI) • To improve standards and competitiveness in the Cellular Industry • To study the best practices & research of the industry • TEMA(Telecom Equipment Manufacturers' Association • To have a body of standards which is delinked from DOT so that the standards for the Indian telecom network, instead of standards for the Department of Telecom, are established. • The Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) • Promoting the inherent strengths of the digital economy • evaluating and recommending standards and practices to the industry, • Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) • Dissemination of knowledge and information for promotion and healthy growth of telecom services

30. Current activities • Standardization of Indian language keyboard for text inputting • Development of Rasterizer for display of text. This Rasterizer engine in customised as per the specifications of the handset. • Development of Indian languages layout engines • Convergence to Unicode at the handset level and UTF 8/ UTF 16/ UCS 2 for transmitting data to and fro from mobile devices

31. Roadmap Review and enhancement of refined Mobile Web Best Practices for Indic Languages 2. Inclusion of new Mobile OK Basic Tests for Indic scripts based on refined guidelines 3. Build a fresh Default Delivery Content (DDC ) for Indic Scripts 4. Implementation of W3C Mobile OK Checker – Initiated with Hindi Language

32. What we want ? Our Aim: Our VISION should be No matter what device I have, No matter what service I want, No matter what carrier or network I’m using, I can communicate, access and exchange information.

33. Thank You ! www.w3cindia.in