Re: Roll-up captions in WebVTT

I have to differ here. I will agree that *if* all other things are
equal, then pop-on captions are vastly preferable.

However, we don't live in a perfect world where during live broadcasts
we have well-formatted, well-synced captions without errors. The
solution that you are talking about has other drawbacks, including
increased lag between the spoken words and the time the captions
appear, which was my number one complaint for live captioning while
living in Europe.

(As a side note, re-speaking opens its own can of worms - HLAA
representatives for instance are very unhappy with the performance of
captioned telephony, which uses this technology, versus steno
captions. Just because something is cheap, it does not mean that it is
a good idea.)

Aside from that, we still have to recognize that even if these issues
are solved, and even if we effect a shift away from roll-up to pop-on
captions over time, the fact is that these types of captions are still
in widespread use. If WebVTT does not support them, there will be a
gap between what is required by the broadcasters and by FCC rules to
be supported on the web and what the standard actually supports. In
this case, one of two things would happen: there would be calls for
yet another standard that would take who-knows-how-long to figure out,
or broadcasters would make the argument that showing captions on the
web is not technically and economically feasible. In either case,
accessibility would be set back for a long time.

Best regards
Christian

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 4:29 AM, Gal Klein <gal@plymedia.com> wrote:
> We at PLYmedia are doing Live Captions for a long while.
>
> We NEVER use roll-up captions as they are really unreadable if you want to
> follow the video and the captions.
>
> We do use stenographers but we collect their inputs and by using simple but
> smart algorithms we break it down to readable captions lines.
>
>
>
> All research studies made about captions clarify the roll-up captions
> interfere with the viewers:
>
>
>
> "While beyond the scope of this document, semantic compression and omission
> techniques are documented in professional literature.  A fine example is the
> analysis of respeaking at the BBC’s news broadcasts, as outlined by Carlo
> Eugeni, “Respeaking the BBC news”, The Sign Language Translator and
> Interpreter 3(1), 2009.
>
> Uniformity in style and visual consistency is a crucial consideration for
> viewer understanding.  Captions present additional visual information to the
> broadcast displayed onscreen.  It is therefore imperative to consider
> natural reading strategies, and overloading of visual elements which
> captions may present.
>
> An example of this is caption scrolling.  While a common practice in many
> real-time broadcasts, caption line scrolling, or even single word scrolling
> interfere with the visual consistency and impair reading comprehension. "
>
>
>
> Keeping roll-up for LIVE is actually continuing with a very old technology
> providing a bad accessibility service.
>
>
>
> Gal
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Foliot [mailto:jfoliot@stanford.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 3:01 AM
> To: 'Ian Hickson'; 'Christian Vogler'
> Cc: 'Silvia Pfeiffer'; public-texttracks@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Roll-up captions in WebVTT
>
>
>
> Ian Hickson wrote:
>
>>
>
>> On Mon, 28 Nov 2011, Christian Vogler wrote:
>
>> >
>
>> > Take a look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_q-RRXw-vY
>
>> >
>
>> > In that video, roll-up is actually very readable and leads the eye
>
>> very
>
>> > well with respect to focusing attention. No captioning or steno
>
>> errors
>
>> > in this video, but I hope this gets the point across.
>
>>
>
>> IMHO that's horrible compared to normal captions. It is always moving,
>
>> which means you can't read it as fast as normal captions, plus it's
>
>> continually distracting from the image.
>
>
>
> With all due respect, your opinion here should not be what is driving
> progress. If *you* don't like roll-up captions, don't use them. Others do
> and want this ability. Christian (for example) found it "...very
> readable...", so just because you don't like it is immaterial to this
> discussion.
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>
>> Good captions should be so low-overheard for the viewer that the
>
>> viewer can entirely forget that he's reading captions in the first
>
>> place. You simply can't get that effect with rollup captions.
>
>
>
> Again, this appears to be your opinion, but can you point us to a definitive
> source for this assertion?  We are not going for "effect" here, but rather
> functionality, and in some instances the need (or desire) to have rollup
> captions exist.  You asked for a use-case, and one was given.
>
> That you don't like it is no cause for it to be discarded.
>
>
>
> JF
>
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
Christian Vogler, PhD
Director, Technology Access Program
Department of Communication Studies
SLCC 1116
Gallaudet University
http://tap.gallaudet.edu/
VP: 202-250-2795

Received on Thursday, 1 December 2011 09:21:11 UTC