Re: accessible streaming

Hmm. It's not that young (SMIL 2.0 has been around for two and a half 
years with implementations, SMIL 1.0 for more than five) and not that 
badly implemented.

QuickTime and RealPlayer have both implemented it for a long time. I 
don't recall if Windows Media player does - that uses the simplified 
SAMI specification, which has some pretty serious gaps in functionality 
for serious accessibility. (It depends whether you mean providing sign 
language interpretation, captions and audio descriptions, and thinking 
about being able to give the right files according to the user's choice 
of player, as SMIL allows, or if you're just going to put basic 
captions, which SAMI can handle).

There is work on a timed-text format to replace the various text track 
formats currently used, which will make life easier when it is 
completed.

In the meantime, as well as Magpie there is HiCaption available for 
captioning video and generating quicktime/realplayer compatible content 
(it can also produce SAMI captions). I don't recall if it costs money 
or comes in a free version - I do know that it is a windows-based 
application, and believe it is included free with AccVerify.

(Note: Sidar worked with HiSoftware to make HiCaption available in 
Spanish).

cheers

Chaals

On 13 Feb 2004, at 02:09, John Foliot - WATS.ca wrote:

> To the original question, Juan, you definitely should be looking at 
> SMIL.
> While still very young and poorly supported, it *is* the recommended 
> way of
> providing accessible streaming technology.  I have had success using 
> SMIL
> with the Real Player; I believe the QuickTime player now supports SMIL 
> as
> well, not 100% sure of the Windows Media Player (Windows was working on
> their own version last I checked called SAMI).  I suggest as well a 
> Google
> for the MAGpie tool, which allows developers to provide the text 
> transcript
> for the streaming content.
>
>
--
Charles McCathieNevile                          Fundación Sidar
charles@sidar.org                                http://www.sidar.org

Received on Saturday, 14 February 2004 11:29:01 UTC