WCAG 2.0 Comment Submission

Name: Tomoaki Kodaka
Email: koda@pk9.so-net.ne.jp
Affiliation: NTT CLARUTY CORPORATION
Document: W2
Item Number: media-equiv
Part of Item: 
Comment Type: general comment
Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change):
　The degree of the spread of audio description is different country to country.

I doubt that our situation in audio description is Level1 slightly, because the word “audio description” itself is not penetrated in my country. In Japan some volunteer groups add audio description to movies.

But it is not spread at the movie theater. It is desirable that all Web image content has audio description. But we don’t know what audio description is and how to produce it-this is our present situation. So I feel fear that image content is left out of the Web units intentionally, by we are detected Level1.It is sure that people who lost the sense of sight can’t get any information which is appeared by only animations. Images lacking in text alternatives don’t have information at all, while multimedia　lacking in audio description has much information―lines, sounds and so on. When we hear the sound of train, we can guess the place is a station. We can understand people are angry or laughing by their tone. 

It is fact that many blind men enjoy listening TV. Lacking in audio description is not a situation in which there is no information. But producing audio description takes time and money.Level1 is an obstacle for us. So I feel fear that image content is left out of the Scoping of conformance claims. 



Proposed Change:
I hope that audio description is prescribed from Level2 and aimed at LevelAA as a following aim. 

It will surely improve accessibility of image contents. I think.　

Received on Wednesday, 21 June 2006 15:15:14 UTC