How localization challenges international portals: character sets and international access.

Access to electronic resources available in another country may be technically difficult. This paper will show which obstacles hinder access on the level of character sets. Most software and parts of hardware such as keyboards are localized, i.e. distributed in versions adapted to a language and its usage in a defined area. Users are now accustomed to this and consider it standard. Despite the fact that Unicode greatly facilitates interoperability, international portals face challenges in this respect because of significant differences between languages and/or countries in handling data, which can still hamper search, display and collation of data. This study has been carried out within the project TEL-ME-MOR with the support of the European Commission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]