Re: Default style

On Aug 10, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Christian Vogler 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.
> 
  Of course it is, I don't believe anyone is suggesting otherwise!

  We obviously need to allow users to choose their preferred styling, I think David was saying that should have good defaults so not everyone *has* to change caption settings in order to read them.

eric


> 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.
>