descriptive video in SMIL

following up on an action item at todays UI guidelines telecon,
i reviewed the following issue
(symm copied for archival purposes, please include it in possible 
reponses):

>#3. SMIL needs to be extended to be able to handle audio descriptions of
>video images (see sample of suggested code below) -- Agreed, and the method
>you propose looks good to me, although I would want to be sure that it is a
>solution that is easy to implement. Could other people please review and
>comment on this - Philipp, George, Geoff? ...I also think that we need a
>mechanism for text descriptions of video images, which my original draft
>didn't deal with adequately.

> 3. User should be able to identify and turn on and off audio descriptions
> of video objects. [Priority one]
> - Rationale: Users who cannot see a video media object need a non-visual
> way to identify that an audio description is available.
> - Technique: Provide a standard mechanism for notifying third party
> assistive technologies (e.g. screen-reading software) of the existence of
> an audio description for a video object. Provide a mechanism (which can
> function non-visually) for turning on or off the audio

i agree with llyod's analysis that letting the user switch audio 
descriptions of video on and off requires introducing a new test attribute

(see

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/1998JulSep/0246.html

for lloyd's comments)

the method he proposes in this message looks good and implementable to 
me (the proposal is to introduce "system-audio-desc" as a new test 
attribute via a namespace as an intermediate solution, and considering 
it for inclusion in a future version of SMIL)

SYMM folks: for an example of what descriptive video is, have a 
look at geoff freed's G2 demos:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-smil/1998JulSep/0025.html

Received on Wednesday, 7 October 1998 16:54:18 UTC