FW: New comment on "<video> accessibility/inclusivity - are we getting close?"

Web chatter FYI

***************

From: messages-noreply@bounce.linkedin.com 
[mailto:messages-noreply@bounce.linkedin.com] On Behalf Of Inclusive Web 
Design
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 6:17 AM
To: John Foliot
Subject: New comment on "<video> accessibility/inclusivity - are we getting 
close?"



I want to respond appropriately to Chris’ post as I feel that this is the 
perfect forum for such a discussion, but I also feel a necessity to position 
this from where I stand and as I am not a developer, have given it 
consideration from the end user perspective.

As I advocate open standards, theoretically <video> certainly seems to be 
the way forward, as I understand it is currently being supported by all 
modern browsers. In addition to this, with Apple’s lack of support of Flash 
on mobile devices and various other proprietary video technologies currently 
being offered license free, there is no commitment that these will remain 
license free in perpetuity and as they are not an open standards, my 
preference would be to support the development of <video> to achieve its 
full potential.

So, at the moment, there is certainly a way to go.

We are currently working on a site for a disability charity and 20% of their 
visitors are using IE6, and although I really like the way html5 <video> 
stacks and enables ease of fallback, if the ultimate fallback is to 
inaccessible Flash, then this is not ideal so the battle to get <video> 
supported in IE and for those with impairments who have certain restrictions 
in their use of the internet or who utilise AT to do so, certainly need to 
be appropriately migrated to the right modern browser that will support both 
html5 and AT.

And within the functionality of <video> and other associated tags inherent 
in the html that may be necessary to facilitate inclusion, in my humble 
opinion, these are they key things that matter:

1. Ensuring that all controls are fully keyboard and screenreader accessible

2. Ensuring that any associated functionality does not rely on client side 
technologies and that the raw html provides the end user with the full 
experience

3. Providing easy ways for developers to implement and for site visitors to 
use and access alternatives to standard video, whether these be close 
captioning, transcription, etc

4. There will also need to be enough flexibility within the html to enable 
significant styling and layout via CSS

5. There will also need to be a way to migrate certain users who have simply 
abandoned video altogether due to the inaccessibility of Flash on so many 
websites. Even though we use JW and Dojo right now, most non geek AT folk 
still don’t trust it so an anti attrition <video> campaign will be required.

And as if this weren’t enough to be getting on with, the much wider issue of 
so many AT vendors refusing to engage with standards and rendering html of 
all flavours in ways that I can only imagine serve to maintain their market 
share, means that <video> will have its challenges but conversely has time 
to develop and is certainly in the position to be, well, the standard!
Posted by Sandi Wassmer
Comment Stop Following Discussion

LinkedIn values your privacy. At no time has LinkedIn made your email 
address available to any other LinkedIn user without your permission. ©2010, 
LinkedIn Corporation.

Received on Wednesday, 28 July 2010 15:51:07 UTC