Re: Accessibility of <audio> and <video>

Ian Hickson wrote:

>> The page creator may not be able to modify the audio or video.
> 
> The video creator may not be able to modify the HTML either. Or it could 
> be a publisher who can't modify the HTML nor the video.

But those scenarios are outside of the WG's power to solve, so 
concentrating on authors who actually have the ability to change the HTML...

> If we are to assume that the video will be authored without accessibility 
> aids, it seems odd not to also assume that the HTML will be authored 
> without accessibility aids.

And yet that's exactly what happens, day in, day out, in many places. 
Different teams within an organisation involved in different areas, 
videos being produced by a third party and commissioned by somebody 
clueless about any accessibility requirements, or even video from one 
site (which doesn't care about accessibility) being reposted on another 
site (which does).

> If we are to assume that the HTML author cares 
> enough to add accessibility aids to the HTML document, it seems just as 
> sensible to assume that the video author will care enough to add 
> accessibility aids to the video.

In an idealised world, yes. Maybe we need some figures on how much video 
out in the wild takes advantage of any 
accessibility-enhancements/metadata provided by the different video formats?

> I don't see why. We don't have a fallback for including a separate audio 
> track for the case where the video doesn't have its own audio track

SMIL and co can be used for this. It would be an interesting idea to 
actually allow for that natively...

> It's the same here. We don't add extra features for people doing it the 
> worng way. They're in the wrong, and what's left is error handling.

What's the error handling of a video or audio that lacks natively 
embedded alternatives, closed captions, etc?

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke
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re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
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Co-lead, Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
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Received on Wednesday, 15 October 2008 17:04:29 UTC