- From: John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu>
- Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:50:34 -0700 (PDT)
- To: "'HTML Accessibility Task Force'" <public-html-a11y@w3.org>
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