SEMIOTICS IN THE REAL WORLD: MAKING INTERACTIVE COMPUTER SYSTEMS ACCESSIBLE TOIDEOGRAPHIC-LANGUAGE USERS

Abstract

The relationship between signs that are used to communicate with an interactive computer system and the entities that are signified (like files, operating system interrupts, text-formatting commands) has grown in a chaotic and haphazard manner. This paper examines the practical problem of developing a front end processor to make interactive computers accessible to users with different sign systems. Ideographic languages are selected for study because they show precisely how existing interactive systems depend on an alphabetic code, as well as having considerable commercial importance.