Re: REF 1.1b - Checkpoint 1.1 - Requirement for full text script of all movies

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Joe Clark wrote:

>
>>The way 1.1 is currently written, it is not clear whether or not one
>>has to provide a complete text script for every movie.
>
>Transcripts should be suggested purely as a last resort, and for
>short videos only. The correct accommodation for deafness in video is
>captioning.

I had thought that was generally understood. Perhaps it needs to be made more
explicit. Even better for some, but not all, Deaf people is a signed
interpretation. The safety videos on Singapore airlines are the example I
happen to know best. (Apparently this isn't called captioning - is there a
propoer name for it?)

>Can someone please give me five real-world examples of "text
>descriptions"? And not from 45-second demo videos, either.

Star Wars - there are books written based on the screenplays of all 5 films.
And lots of other films besides. True, they tend to stray marginally from the
film from time to time, but interpretation is hard. Films based on books tend
to stray too, but they are still a good way of helping some people understand
a book they won't get to actually read. If you are using one OR the other
then the differences should be trivial, or actually enhance the experience.
(This is not like captioning, where you are using two things together and the
need for accurate synchronisation is much greater).

At the theatre the scripts of plays are provided to the audience
(including text descriptions of important action - known in the trade as
"stage directions").  I believe the same is sometimes true of Opera. Many
films are produced based on screenplays, and in smoe cases these are edited
along with the film, to match the final result.

>>Can somebody please explain how text descriptions are supposed to
>work for blind people? How non-synchronized written words are
>supposed to make a "time-dependent" multimedia presentation
>accessible? Explain *in detail*. WAI always has trouble with detail.

The point about a full text equivalent (sometimes called a "collated text
transcript" or similar in WCAG discussions) is that it does not need to be
presented alongside the original. Nobody reads Lord of the Rings while in the
cinema watching it, as far as I know.

>Can somebody please explain, further, how text descriptions, a
>concept that the WAI dreamed up and glibly accepts without following
>its implications through, are anything but a laughingstock of an
>accessibility technique compared to audio description?

I don't believe anyone participating in WAI work seriously thinks that a
plain text is the same experience as a movie with audio description for a
blind person with hearing - much as a text version isn't the same as a
captioned movie for a Sighted Deaf person. Although I am not sure what a
deaf-blind person would make of it.

>I don't know how to go about fixing the multimedia section when WAI
>insists on clinging to everything that is beside the point,
>ineffective, and flat-out wrong.

I would suggest proposing incremental changes to the existing text, backed
with dry arguments lacking your usual flamboyance and style. It seems to be
the way international groups can make progress and maintain some level of
understanding, and the premise behind the W3C process of successive working
drafts, revised based on reviewers' comments. Your mileage may vary.

Received on Friday, 11 July 2003 21:39:16 UTC