Comments on Joe Clark's WCAG review

A couple of quick comments on Joe Clark's comments
<http://joeclark.org/f2f/?GL> on WCAG 2.0 Public Draft:

Under "Deficiency Report:
1) Checkpoint 1.1: I agree with Joe's concern over the use of the word
"significant".  This checkpoint should emphasize the importance of all
dialog and sound effects being captioned.

2) Response to captioning implementation issue in Joe's comments:
Joe wrote:
"There is no reliable way to produce online closed captions, using media
playersı scripting or text formats, that works in the real world. Magpie and
similar SMIL/SAMI generators are not production-ready."

This is listed as an implementation issue under the subheading "Real-Time
Video".  The statement that there is no reliable way to produce online
closed captions is false.  Captions can be delivered for Real and Windows
media open or closed very reliably.  This can be done for both real-time and
off-line (not live) projects.  It is done very infrequently for live
broadcasts, but is reliable when done.  The obstacles to live closed
captions seem to be budgetary rather than technical.

Regarding MAGpie and other SMIL/SAMI generators, I'm not sure how that fits
in here.  MAGpie is not designed as a tool for real-time captioning, so it
is certainly not production-ready for that task.  However, with regard to
off-line captioning, there are a number of tools that can be used to create
closed captions for a variety of media types.  Depending on the definition
of "production-ready", you might or might not consider tools like MAGpie and
HiSoftware's HiCaption "ready".  These tools are used in production
environments.  In addition, a variety of "Production" tools (including the
one used by the Media Access Group here at WGBH) are capable of delivering
text tracks for different media formats.

Under "Recommendations":
3) Joe wrote:
Itıs unrealistic to expect authors to caption all their videoclips right
away. 
    i. They donıt have the expertise and certainly should not be encouraged
to guess or dabble.

It may be unrealistic to expect, but it is important to set the bar on what
accessible means with regard to multimedia content for people who can't
hear.  WCAG 2.0 should not set phase-in percentages; that should be left to
a legislative interpretation.

Dabbling should be encouraged.  People learn from bad examples as much as
good ones, and bad captions are usually better than no captions.  Large
productions tend to outsource or hire trained captioners because of the
efficiencies of the work being done by a professional.

These comments also apply to audio description, although it is certain that
fewer people will dabble at audio description than captioning.

4) On transcription:
"Transcription is not the way to make video accessible. The correct
accessibility methods are captioning and audio description."

It is important to keep transcription on the table.  A deaf-blind person
doesn't benefit from audio description unless there is a text transcript
that includes the audio description text.  Caption and audio description
production can include an additional step to output such a transcript.

5) On collated text transcripts:
"A ³combined² caption transcript plus audio-description script has been
attempted exactly once in known history (for a demonstration project that
was never completed). There is no method to combine those two sources due,
among other reasons, to a lack of interchange formats. The idea is a
non-starter."

Previous attempts are probably not too relevant here.  This is easy to do
and is important for deaf-blind users.  There is no post-production method
for combining the CC and AD sources, but it can be accomplished using
MAGpie's XML project file and XSLT.  This is not a built-in feature of
MAGpie at this time, but a  method exists.

6) Under "original Web content":
"Live video and audio presentations should require captioning or description
only if the source is already captioned or described. Adding real-time
captions is an onerous process online, reliant on proprietary JavaScript
methods; itıs also expensive. Live description has almost never been
attempted."

This comes back to the practicality of Real-time web captioning.  It is
possible and practical, and doesn't require proprietary javascript methods.
It is expensive, but it is hard to find any time-sensitive skilled labor
that isn't.

AWK

-- 
Andrew Kirkpatrick
CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media
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Boston, MA  02134
E-mail: andrew_kirkpatrick@wgbh.org
Web site: ncam.wgbh.org

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Received on Monday, 8 September 2003 11:35:49 UTC