RE: text equivalents for multimedia

Gee it's nice to give good news ;-)

SMIL works with streaming AND non-streaming formats. SMIL will allow you to
put together images, short sound files, pretty much anything your SMIL player
can handle. For mor information on what players are out there (there are a
number) and what they can handle, try http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo - the SMIL
working Group's home page. (Perhaps the best known example of SMIL promoting
accessibility is the WGBH/NCAM car movie - a short presentation designed for
the G2 player that uses movies, audio and text captions, but there are plenty
of other possiblities.

There are also several SMIL authoring tools available, for different prices
(including free) and different platforms. Again details are avaiable from the
SMIL page given above.

Given that she is in any case downloading the sound files, creating a SMIL
presentation that adds captions will not significantly increase the bandwidth
requirements. (It is possible to have the sound come from somewhere else and
keep the captions locally).

Charles McCN

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Bruce Bailey wrote:

  Not to rain on anyone's parade here, but doesn't SMIL work ONLY with
  STREAMING audio formats (i.e, Real G2 and QuickTime)?  Broadcast hosting
  services are expensive!  I would wager lunch that the binaries Anne wants to
  post are HUGE .wav files that take a longer to download (at dialup speeds)
  than they take to play!  If this is the case, links to static text is ALL
  she can do!  I hope someone tells me I am wrong about this!

Received on Thursday, 2 March 2000 13:00:27 UTC