Media Captioning Question

Forwarding the following to the list with Geoff's permission, because
this conversation should engage our wider community ...

Geoff Freed writes:

hi, janina:

several years ago i tried some experiments with the concept using SMIL with CWI's Ambulant player on windows and windows CE, but these were things i did not publish anywhere.  others here at NCAM have also kicked around the idea of pausing the video and program audio (that is, the main audio) tracks in order to display supplemental info in the caption region, such as vocabulary definitions or other text that is not part of the program-audio track.  we referred to this concept of using additional text as "extended captions," but to the best of my knowledge, nobody is actually using extended captions today in any sense of the word.

as for terminology, things can be a bit squishy but still we can find a way to conform terminology between captions and descriptions.  "extended descriptions" has been in use for at least a decade.  NCAM even ran a three-year study (2000-2003) of the concept of using extended descriptions in the classroom.  however, the Access for All standard (http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/index.html#accDRD) uses the adjective "enhanced" to describe supplemental information added to things like captions or descriptions.  in fact, version 2 of the specification even uses the term "enhanced descriptions" specifically at http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/accpnpv2p0/spec/ISO_ACCPNPinfoModelv2p0.html#_Toc259001615.  below is what is written into the spec:

======
Rule A.23-01:
If Code = 01 (Enhanced) is used, the caption being described is enhanced, i.e. it contains extra
content such as images, hyperlinks, etc.
======

version 3 of the spec is due out very soon, and my colleague madeleine rothberg tells me it *will* use the specific terms "enhanced captions" and "enhanced descriptions."  madeleine also says that rich schwerdtfeger is working on getting Access for All integrated into HTML5 media queries (we might want to ask him about that as i am not following that topic).  so, in the spirit of consistency with other specs as well a using a common term that can be easily understood by non-specification-reading dweebs like us, i'd lobby for using "enhanced descriptions" and "enhanced captions" in the a11y user requirements doc.   i think they both convey the points we're trying to make.  what do you think?

geoff.





On 8/24/10 10:22 PM, "Janina Sajka" <janina@rednote.net> wrote:

Hi, Geoff:

I've been meaning to get your advice on the following for some days now
...

In the HTML 5 A11y TF's Media Accessibility User Requirements we use the
"Extended" concept twice, once for video description, and once for
captions. But, we actually mean pretty different things by these, so I'd
prefer to not use the "extended" term for both.

1.)     Extended makes sense to me with descriptions. We're "extending"
the timeline. Arguably, it's an orthogonal extension, but an extension
of time, nonetheless.

2.)     We're using extended about captions, as well:

http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/wiki/Media_Accessibility_Requirements#Extended_Time-aligned_Captions.2FSubtitles


However, it strikes me that we're "enhancing" or maybe "enriching" the
captions with additional functionality.

So, the question ...

Is the concept of "Extended Captions" truly used today, so that it's too
late to use a different E word to help distinguish from descriptions?
Our text claims this to be common usage. Is it? Or should we look at a
word other than "extended" for captions? Or for descriptions?

Janina

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
		sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net

Chair, Open Accessibility	janina@a11y.org	
Linux Foundation		http://a11y.org

Chair, Protocols & Formats
Web Accessibility Initiative	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Received on Thursday, 26 August 2010 01:22:26 UTC