Caption synchronization tolerance

>What I said was that I didn't know if it was possible to create a 
>number. Live captioning is delayed for a number of reasons -- 
>including allowing people to read and correct the captions before 
>transmission. That delay is unavoidable today. Yet that delay would 
>be unacceptable in a captioned movie.

 From a user perspective, it may be highly undesirable, but I am not 
convinced the WCAG needs to custom-craft a regulation that will 
prevent that from happening.

>Also, when doing training, you want the captions to lead any 
>important visual event.  That is, you dont want the person reading 
>the caption when they should be looking at the screen to see 
>something critical.

In fact, you may well want exactly that. Read caption; caption 
disappears; look at screen. The option suggested above is: No 
caption; look at screen; read caption.

I have witnessed both examples over the years. And in fact, you can 
check it for yourself-- watch _Martha Stewart Living_ for a while, 
which, it must be pointed out, is very much a training program.

>So having a time gap criterion may yield either an impossible goal 
>or a goal that is way too loose for general use.

Just say "synchronized," "closely synchronized," or "reasonably synchronized."

>Larry Goldberg or Geoff Freed would have the answer though.  Perhaps 
>there is a standard for Pre-captioned and another for 
>Live-captioned. I would suspect though that these should be 
>recommendations or targets (and should be in techniques) rather than 
>sufficiency criteria which are normative.
>
>Geoff?  Larry?

Geoff has written in already. He and Larry are not the only experts 
in the world, *God love 'em*. It would be excessive to infer that 
Gregg thinks only official WGBH opinion counts. I've been watching 
captions longer than nearly everyone on earth has been doing it.

But I don't want to ruin what was really quite a good day.
-- 
         Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org | <http://joeclark.org/access/>
         Accessibility articles, resources, and critiques ||
           "I can't pretend to understand the mind of Joe Clark"
           -- Larry Goldberg

Received on Monday, 27 August 2001 22:49:53 UTC