William Overington wrote on 06/25/2003 06:26:25 AM: > Well, I realize that what I say may, at first glance, possibly appear > extreme at times, yet please do consider what I write in an objective > manner. If Unicode has a WHEELCHAIR SYMBOL then that is a symbol, if > Unicode encodes a HANDICAPPED SIGN then that is a description of someone to > whom it is applied, a Boolean sign for all, whatever the disability may be, > whether it is relevant to the matter in hand or not. I do wonder whether > the encoding of the symbol as HANDICAPPED SIGN would be consistent with > human rights as it would be assisting automated decision making with a > Boolean flag and providing an infrastructure for such practices.
Wm, the name is simply a unique identifier within the std. A name may be somewhat indicative of it's function, but is not necessarily so. You could call it WHEELCHAIR SYMBOL, but that engineering of the standard is not also social engineering, and people may still use it to label individuals in a way that may be violating human rights -- we cannot stop that. No matter what we call it, end users are not very likely going to be aware of the name in the standard; they're just going to look for the shape, and if they find it, they'll use it for whatever purpose they chose to. - Peter --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Constable Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA Tel: +1 972 708 7485
