Re: a11y TF CfC on resolution to support "Media Text Associations" change proposal for HTML issue 9

On 4/6/10 9:25 AM, "Eric Carlson" <eric.carlson@apple.com> wrote:



On Apr 6, 2010, at 12:58 PM, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:31 PM, Eric Carlson <eric.carlson@apple.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 6, 2010, at 11:13 AM, Geoff Freed wrote:
>>>
>>> Ditto here:  captions and controls should never cover or come into contact
>>> with each other.  It's of lesser importance whether the captions and
>>> controls move to avoid covering each other, or if the captions and controls
>>> remain in fixed and separate regions.  For an example of the latter, see any
>>> captioned video at http://www.hulu.com; for the former (in addition to
>>> Silvia's example), download Hulu desktop at
>>> http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop .
>>
>>   I agree that controls should not cover captions, but I don't think we
>> *can* describe exactly how to handle the situation when they do. For example
>> what should happen when a UA uses a movable, "HUD style", controller?
>> eric
>
> I am only concerned with the default controls that appear when the
> @controls attribute is used. I believe we can mandate for this
> situation that the captions should always stay above the default
> controls. What a Web developer does with custom controls is out of our
> control anyway and they would need to make sure that if they provide
> captions it will still work for their audience.
>
> Maybe we do need to prescribe more specific recommendations on the
> @control. Maybe that the controls should overlap only the bottom part
> of the video up to a certain percentage? This is how it is currently
> implemented by all browsers, so shouldn't be a problem.
>
  We can not assume that controls will always be along the bottom of the media element, as I noted earlier WebKit already uses a movable HUD for fullscreen video. The default position is not at the bottom of the video, but it can be placed anywhere by the user.

GF:
Given that in large percentage of cases, captions and subtitles appear either in a region adjacent to the lower edge of the video OR are laid directly over the lower-third of the video region, a reasonable solution may be to state that the default position of the controls should not be in these areas.  As Sean said elsewhere, if viewers want to drag the controller over the captions, that's their decision.  But it would be nice if the controller didn't obscure the text by default.