Re: Default style

It certainly used to be important on standard-definition TVs with overlayed captions rendered in few pixels on slightly blurry CRT displays.

Whether this experience actually carries over to internet captioning, or to small devices where visual tuning is rather important, and so on, I think is very much a matter of research and experience -- which, for the most part, has yet to be done.

When users can fiddle with settings (a) many users get lost in the maze of settings and (b) some users actually make their experience worse, not better.  We should be attempting to make captioning effective and legible 'out of the box', first and foremost, and only then should we ask whether there are problems we can move onto the end-user's shoulders. It should not be, by default, their problem or issue.




On Aug 10, 2012, at 17:04 , Christian Vogler <christian.vogler@gallaudet.edu> wrote:

> This doesn't work for people with vision problems. They need to choose captioning settings to adapt to their specific needs. And it also has been recognized by VPAAC and by the FCC IP captioning rules. User control is a core requirement.
> 
> Christian
> 
> Christian Vogler, PhD
> Director, Technology Access Program
> Department of Communication Studies
> SLCC 1116
> Gallaudet University
> http://tap.gallaudet.edu/
> VP/Voice: 202-250-2795
> 
> On Aug 10, 2012 8:00 PM, "David Singer" <singer@apple.com> wrote:
> 
> On Aug 10, 2012, at 13:52 , Loretta Guarino Reid <lorettaguarino@google.com> wrote:
> 
>> I think the clearest conclusion is that the user needs to be able to choose the styling. Not everyone finds the same style readable.
> 
> I beg to differ;  I think that the captioning should be designed to be generally legible.  It's not practical or desirable for the user to have to fiddle with a lot of settings.
> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 1:49 PM, Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org> wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Christian Vogler <christian.vogler@gallaudet.edu> wrote:
>> Before going off on aesthetics, I think it would be useful to take a
>> long hard look at readability. For instance, things like this article:
>> http://captionmax.com/blog/2011/02/dvd-subtitles-are-unreadable/
>> 
>> Neither of the images in this post are using a text outline, so there's not much of a comparison to draw.  Of course white text with no contrast element at all is unacceptable.
>> 
>> I also beg to differ with respect to modern captions not using a dark
>> background.
>> 
>> The only major case I'm aware of is closed captioning, and those aren't modern.  They probably date to hardware which wasn't capable of anything else.
>> 
>> While outlines help, they're still not as readable as a
>> suitable background. The question that needs answering here, I think,
>> is whether suitable outlining of fonts makes dark backgrounds
>> superfluous. I'm not sure that this is the case. Anyone have data on
>> this?
>> 
>> I disagree that dark backgrounds help at all compared to text outlines.  I only find them ugly, and very distracting.  There are lots of examples of outlined text here: http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Use_cases_for_timed_tracks_rendered_over_video_by_the_UA, and they're easy to read even at thumbnail size.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Glenn Maynard
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> David Singer
> Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.
> 

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.