RE: RAUR and Media Synchronisation

Thank you, John, for your thoughtful and informative comments.

Josh, do you wish to make changes to the RAUR draft in response to John’s input? If so, I can collaborate with Janina and Becky regarding the CfC process (for substantive changes, presumably it would be a brief CfC here in the Task Force first, followed by an updated request to APA for a CfC to publish as a Note).

Regards,

Jason.

From: John Paton <John.Paton@rnib.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2020 12:57 PM
To: public-rqtf@w3.org
Subject: RAUR and Media Synchronisation

Hi all,

Thanks for welcoming me onto the call today. I’ve had a look over the RAUR and as expected I can’t see any showstoppers. I’ve a couple of questions/comments.

REQ 8a: Ensure Audio Description (AD) recommended sound values are dynamic

  *   Does this mean ensure users can set AD volume independent of main audio?
I’d be interested in the wider use case for this. Would this be a live stream of someone explaining any visuals in a teleconference or an AD option on pre-recorded videos shown in a webinar? Either may run into problems since the live describer in the former example won’t have guaranteed gaps in dialogue in which to add descriptions and people may talk over any gaps in dialogue in the latter.

User Need 9: Any deaf or hard of hearing user watching captioning or audio description needs to be confident it is synchronised and accurate.

  *   AD is normally used by people with vision loss so it may be better to replace “Any deaf or hard of hearing user…” with “Any user…”. This also accounts for other use cases for subtitles such as the teleconference language not being the users primary language. My wife is Czech so we watch everything with subtitles.

2.9 Emergency calls: Support for Real-time text (RTT)
- For a while in the UK VoIP and ToIP were not considered valid ways of contacting emergency services since they didn’t have the reliability of a POTS connection. We had to add a disclaimer stating that our soft textphone was not to be used (or relied on, I can’t quite remember) for contacting emergency services. I take it that the requirement, or not, for a disclaimer in line with local laws is out of scope for this document?

4.1 Deaf users: Video resolution and frame rates
Scenario: A deaf user watching a signed broadcast needs a high-quality frame rate to maintain legibility and clarity in order to understand what is being signed.

  *   As a point of interest, research that RNID performed found that BSL users watching signed content focused on the lips and took in the physical hand gestures and body movements through peripheral vision. There was talk at the time of adaptive video compression algorithms that compressed facial features less. I’m not aware that anything came out of that though and it feels rather ambitious. I’m not sure how this info impacts RAUR but it may be useful back-of-mind stuff.

In Media Synchronisation
A couple of BBC Whitepapers may be of interest. The Impact of Subtitle Display Rate on Enjoyment Under Normal Television Viewing Conditions<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Frd%2Fpublications%2Fwhitepaper306&data=04%7C01%7Cjjwhite%40ets.org%7C350a1b94ac3d4d2301aa08d88c74321d%7C0ba6e9b760b34fae92f37e6ddd9e9b65%7C0%7C1%7C637413778546419051%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=O3IVs40YvM%2BtcH%2FUya%2FWdRGhWwM%2BMftT4O8%2FBqxOI4w%3D&reserved=0> and Live subtitles re-timing proof of concept<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Frd%2Fpublications%2Fwhitepaper318&data=04%7C01%7Cjjwhite%40ets.org%7C350a1b94ac3d4d2301aa08d88c74321d%7C0ba6e9b760b34fae92f37e6ddd9e9b65%7C0%7C1%7C637413778546429048%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=QiTs%2BMINEOVCsDgbckRXOej6u0teuscqCJffCTlTaPg%3D&reserved=0>. The second one is more for interest and the tl;dr version is that the video encoding for HD video takes about 5 seconds so by tweaking the workflow they can regain that time and reduce the lag between video and subtitles. I don’t know if that is in scope for the requirements doc.

I’m looking forward to the discussion on miniapps in a couple of weeks.

Best regards,

John

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