Re: Bilingual captions conformance

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Loretta Guarino Reid <lorettaguarino@google.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 12:50:06 -0700
Subject: Re: Caption language
To: Sailesh Panchang <sailesh.panchang@deque.com>
Cc: Joshue O Connor <joshue.oconnor@cfit.ie>, Andrew Kirkpatrick
<akirkpat@adobe.com>

Yes, I looked up the definition of captions, and it is vague on this issue.
"needed to understand the media content"  :-(

I continue to believe that it is a slippery slope to start requiring
content that is not already present in the original representation (in this
case, the audio). If a web page author localizes the text of a web page,
but does not localize the video, should the localized page fail WCAG? I
claim not, since deaf users are no more disadvantaged than any other users.
Of course, it is not the ideal experience for anyone.

Should video authors offer captions in as many languages as possible? Of
course (says the software engineer working on captions at Google). But "as
many languages as possible" is not testable.

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 12:40 PM, Sailesh Panchang <
sailesh.panchang@deque.com> wrote:

> Hello Loretta,
> The definition of captions  (called subtitles in some lands) as per
> WCAG2 does not say what language it should be in. Neither does any
> technique clarify this.
> So when the spoken audio content is in a different lang from the
> primary lang, the captions covering spoken content + non-verbal sound
> descriptions may be in the language of the spoken audio. Or it may be
> in the primary lang. I cannot see any reference to why it should fail
> WCAG2 . You seemed to object to this statement when I voiced this on
> the call today. Please can you help me understand what I am missing?
> I added, from a usability viewpoint, it will be better if the same
> lang is used for spoken text and other berbal sound descriptions.
> I also referred to my survey comment that said in this case the user
> should be given a choice to select the lang in which captions should
> be rendered.
> Thanks,
> Sailesh Panchang
> Phone 703-225-0380 ext 105
> Mobile 571-344-1765
>

Received on Wednesday, 13 August 2014 16:42:09 UTC