Re: Media: How would one caption this?

Hi, Silvia, All:

I am slow responding, but want to comment that, upon reflection, I agree
with Silvia that the multi-language caption display requirement I'm
suggesting isn't specifically an accessibility requirement.

I would like to capture it as a general requirement, though. Since we're
creating a complex of standards for media delivered via the web, there
are several use cases where line by line multi-lang display would be
helpful to people, and we should have the mechanism to support that.

Learning a language is one use case.

Per the example of music I noted in my first post, it's traditional
among music students/professionals to study opera with "one finger on
the original language, and a second finger on the translation," as my
professor put it so many years ago. This is actually important for
understanding how the composer treated the words, because there are all
kinds of musical tricks that composers employ to "paint" the words in
sound. The translation doesn't give that clarity, only the original
language.

I'm sure there are more use cases.

Janina

Silvia Pfeiffer writes:
> Hi Janina, all,
> 
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 5:16 AM, Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> wrote:
> > Further to our conversation on the Media Subteam telecon today, and a
> > further use case for Enhanced Captioning as defined in our Media
> > Accessibility User Requirements ...
> >
> > Consider how one should caption ...
> >
> > The quartet <lang=it>Bella figlia dell'amore</lang> from the opera
> > <lang=it>Rigoletto</lang>?
> >
> > http://www.opera-arias.com/verdi/rigoletto/bella-figlia-dell'amore/
> >
> > As is so common in opera, we have four singers singing different words
> > at the same time. This would be babble in daily speech, or even in the
> > theater. But, the music makes it work in opera, which is why it's a
> > common situation in opera.
> >
> > Here's another example with six voices:
> >
> > This is the famous sextet from the <lang=de>Mozart</lang> opera
> > <lang=it>Le Nozze de Figaro</lang:
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWsSmAXSAGQ
> 
> 
> You probably can't see this, but this latter video actually has
> burnt-in captions. These captions are in English, even though they are
> singing in Italian.
> 
> 
> > I suspect our Enhanced Captioning definition isn't sufficient for this
> > use case inasmuch as we probably want our captions to show in two
> > languages in such circumstances, the Italian original and the user's
> > preferred lang in some kind of duplex display.
> >
> > So, another requirement for the ECC set?
> 
> The document at http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/media-accessibility-reqs/ states:
> [ECC-4] It needs to be possible to define timed text cues that are
> allowed to overlap with each other in time and be present on screen at
> the same time (e.g., those that come from speech of different
> speakers), and such that are not allowed to overlap and thus cause
> media playback pause to allow users to catch up with their reading.
> 
> So, the ECC set already covers display of caption cues of multiple
> speakers (singers) at the same time.
> Also, the HTML TextTrack API already allows for this.
> 
> As for having more than one language track active at the same time: I
> don't think there is a general need from an accessibility point for
> this. A hearing-impaired person's aim should be to understand what is
> being spoken/sung, so giving the content to them in the language that
> is their main language seems to satisfy that use case. I can, however,
> see how somebody who might want to learn a foreign language (in this
> case: might want to understand the foreign language that is being
> sung) might want to see the direct translation between the two. I
> believe, however, this latter to not be an accessibility use case.
> Rather it is a more generic use case. Incidentally, it is also already
> possible in HTML to write an application that can display more than
> one track of captions at the same time using the existing TextTrack
> API.
> 
> HTH.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Silvia.

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina@rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/

Received on Wednesday, 28 May 2014 12:55:34 UTC