[media] Moving towards a consensus for video transcripts

Hi all,

We've had two phone conferences over the last two days to discuss the
different change proposals that have been put forward to satisfy the
need for programmatically associated transcripts with video & audio
elements (bug 12964 [1] and issue-194 [2]).

[1] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12964
[2] http://dev.w3.org/html5/status/issue-status.html#ISSUE-194

In summary: we've made huge progress and are moving towards a
consensus CP. We haven't exactly addressed all the details and some
objections still exist, but we believe that within a week and with the
next media a11y TF phone conference we can actually come up with a
consensus CP.

Here are some more details:
* we believe that it is preferable to have a unified solution for the
different use cases for transcripts
* we believe that there should be default rendering of transcripts and
off-page transcript links by the browser
* we prefer not to introduce an explosion of buttons on the page to
select between different text alternatives for media
* we prefer re-using the <track> element for 'interactive transcripts'
(as defined by wikipedia [3])

After analysing the different options listed in the transcript
research page [4] and the latest proposal [5], we generally agreed
that introduction of a landmark element called <transcript> seems to
be a good idea. It is particularly advantageous to enable browser
rendering of interactive transcripts in this way. The details of how
<transcript> would work with non-interactive transcripts are, however,
not agreed yet.

It is those details that we will be working through in the next media
a11y TF meeting.

Some of the issues that need to be discussed are:

* would a @transcript attribute on the video element be better than a
@for attribute on the transcript element?
  + it would encourage introduction of a transcript menu in the video controls
  + it could be a list of IDREFs and thus allow linking to different
transcripts in different areas on the page

* one problem is that <a> elements inside a <transcript> (e.g. to link
to doc or pdf transcripts) would be focusable even when hidden from
sight
  -> maybe we can avoid using <a> elements, but how?

* how can we support downloading of transcripts so they can be read,
e.g. on the plane?
  -> put a context menu link on <video>? on <transcript>? on both?

We would like to encourage in particular browser vendor comment on
proposal [5] and the issues above, and would like to invite them to
participate in next week's media accessibility TF meeting, which
should be announced shortly.

I'd also particularly like to ask for Ian's comments/suggestions given
his extensive design experience as the HTML spec editor.

Best Regards,
Silvia.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Transcripts
[4] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ISSUE-194/Research
[5] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposal/Issue194_SP

Received on Friday, 11 May 2012 23:53:53 UTC