This is an archive of the original scripts.sil.org site, preserved as a historical reference. Some of the content is outdated. Please consult our other sites for more current information: software.sil.org, ScriptSource, FDBP, and silfontdev



Home

Contact Us

General

Initiative B@bel

WSI Guidelines

Encoding

Principles

Unicode

Training

Tutorials

PUA

Conversion

Resources

Utilities

TECkit

Maps

Resources

Input

Principles

Utilities

Tutorials

Resources

Type Design

Principles

Design Tools

Formats

Resources

Font Downloads

Gentium

Doulos

IPA

Rendering

Principles

Technologies

OpenType

Graphite

Resources

Font FAQ

Links

Glossary


Computers & Writing Systems

SIL HOME | SIL SOFTWARE | SUPPORT | DONATE | PRIVACY POLICY

You are here: General
Short URL: https://scripts.sil.org/digitaldivide

The Digital Divide

Alan Conner, 2001-01-01

Beyond the Digital Divide

The digital revolution has improved standards of living, education and public health — at least for societies with access to that technology.

Many ethnic minorities around the world, however, are marginalized because their languages cannot be represented or processed by current technology.

Often, these groups are too small or poor to attract the commercial investment behind technological advancements. As a result, speakers of many minority languages are technological “have-nots.” This situation is known as “The Digital Divide.”

SIL chartered the Non-Roman Script Initiative (NRSI) to enable ethnic minorities to bridge the digital divide. NRSI participates in the work of the Unicode Consortium, an international nonprofit founded to establish a universal standard for representing each character of all the world's writing systems on the computer.

Using the Unicode standard, SIL is pioneering a new technology named Graphite. Designed to enable the use of complex writing systems, this extensible software component allows programmers to create digital writing systems for minority languages. To harness Graphite technology, SIL is developing WorldPad, a word processor which creates and edits multilingual documents with complicated scripts.

The original program code for Graphite may be downloaded for free at Graphite. Making this intellectual property freely available enables software developers to incorporate Graphite’s program code into other programs. This “open source” strategy empowers others to build on Graphite’s foundation to create customized digital solutions to meet the needs of indigenous peoples.

Many languages have no access to the digital world. Over 600 of these have no access simply because they use a non-Roman script. NRSI has recognized that capacity building and partnership are essential to bridge the digital divide. The digital revolution has improved standards of living, education and public health — at least for societies with access to that technology.



Note: the opinions expressed in submitted contributions below do not necessarily reflect the opinions of our website.



© 2003-2024 SIL International, all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted elsewhere on this page.
Provided by SIL's Writing Systems Technology team (formerly known as NRSI). Read our Privacy Policy. Contact us here.