Re: the market hasn't spoken - it hasn't bothered to listened

Lachlan Hunt wrote:

> BTW, DVDs don't get sold with books describing the entire film for those 
> who can't watch it.  They do, however, get produced with captions, 
> subtitles and sometimes audio descriptions.  Why should video on the web 
> be any different?

We not discussing video on the web : we are discussing video
embedded in a web page, which is very different.  If we were
discussing video on the web, as professional video producers,
then I have no doubt that good accessibility practice would
guide our adoption of audio description, closed captions and
whatever.  But we are not : rather, we are discussing taking
video that (almost certainly) someone else has produced, and
embedding it in a web page for which we are responsible.  At
that point, the accessibility issues become /our/ concern,
and it is incumbent on us to ensure that such web pages are
maximally accessible, (a) because it will help to ensure
equal access for all, and (b) because it is a legal requirement
in much of the world.  Therefore I support those who advocate
ensuring that a textual (or aural, or braille, or whatever)
description of a /summary/ of the video content be required
as an child-element or attribute of whatever element is used
to embed the video.

Philip Taylor

Received on Thursday, 28 June 2007 08:25:27 UTC