RE: Roll-up captions in WebVTT

Hi Christian,

1st I really appreciate your quick response.
We might not live in a perfect world, but must strive to improve always and
not stick to old habits, especially bad ones that don't server well the
people who actually need our services the Hard-Of-Hearing community.
All of the issues you have just mentioned were addressed and solved,
including better sync, content correction etc.
As for taking content from broadcasters and putting the captions live
(extracting the Line21 Captions and then overlaying them on the web) , the
solution is even simpler then.

Warm Regards,
Gal Klein

-----Original Message-----
From: Christian Vogler [mailto:christian.vogler@gallaudet.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 2:35 PM
To: Gal Klein
Cc: John Foliot; Ian Hickson; Silvia Pfeiffer; public-texttracks@w3.org
Subject: 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 09:32:05 UTC