RE: Roll-up captions in WebVTT

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>
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