- From: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:08:59 -0700
- To: jfoliot@stanford.edu
- Cc: Matt May <mattmay@adobe.com>, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 6:43 PM, <jfoliot@stanford.edu> wrote: > Apologies for top posting. > > Jonas, I am having a hard time understanding your confusion. There is no > technical restriction that prevents the posting of an audio file without a > transcript, however without the transcript the posting will not meet the > WCAG requirement. Does the HTML WG care about this? > > Dan C. posted earlier that by W3C policy transcripts must be included with > audio and video content. Does this affect the decision process? > > In both cases the decisions are policy driven and not technology driven. > Creating accurate transcripts today is still relatively low tech: a > transcriptionist, a stenography machine, a set of head-phones and the audio > track. I have offered to pay for at least one telecon transcription from my > own pocket, and Matt has suggested that WAI has resources that might also > assist in this area. The one thing that I think neither Matt nor I want is > for this to be seen as "the accessibility extremists" frustrating progress. > The WG should do what it thinks is right. > > Assuming however that publishing an audio file as part of official W3C > business, without a transcript, is actually a viable option completely > ignores the social component of the larger discussion - a continued sticking > point *especially* in this working group. This is another classic case of > understanding (or failing to understand) that accomodation is part of > ensuring full access - and that technology alone cannot solve all access > problems. I care much more about what helps people than what is policy. So if something helps people but goes against WCAG (or any other policy) then I would choose to go against WCAG policy in order to help people. It would also seem like a good idea to notify WAI that WCAG is suboptimal, but I wouldn't wait for WAI to change WCAG. My preferred option is of course to publish both the recording as well as create a transcript and publish that. However, if creating a transcript is not possible for financial reasons, then that reduces our options to either publish recordings without transcript, or publish nothing. Out of those two options I think publish recordings is better. I'm sorry you feel the need to point out especially this working group. I can only guess as to why and since I don't think that will be very productive I will refrain from doing so. My confusion stemmed from the fact that I had missed that there were financial resources available to pay for transcripts, that is all. / Jonas
Received on Saturday, 15 August 2009 05:09:59 UTC