- From: Roberto Ellero <rellero@webaccessibile.org>
- Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 19:11:54 +0100
- To: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Makoto: At the today's teleconference, we discussed the captioning and the audio description. It'll depend on the premise the WCAG WG has. CASE 1: WCAG 2.0 doesn't consider the "practical reality" but will define what the accessible web content is. In this case, we should keep the captioning and the audio description at Level 1. But it is really hard for the authors to do that at this moment. Both the captioning and the audio description require specialist expertise to be done correctly. It could result in the situation that many web designers/developers would give up the conformance with WCAG 2.0. [...] Ellero: Of course I consider correct that the "practical reality" in Japanese authoring is a great problem about captioning, but for the rest I really think that making captions and audio descriptions synchronized with SAMI and SMIL in QuickTime, Real and WMP movies is not an issue of technical difficulty, but "only" a "work required" issue. In other words, Multimedia accessibility is in my opinion a part of knowledge of Content editors. In fact, to make captions and audio descriptions as in this examples in a my testing - in all formats - is easy and doable for everybody, using MAGpie or other tools [1]: http://www.test.robertoellero.it/elaborazioni_sottotitoli/ [needs to set wm and Real players to "show captions", the code is valid and crossbrowser using Object] On the contrary it is often difficult to "reconstruct" the scenario (the original text) in order to communicate what is happening (not dialogical) to visually impaired users. That's an interpretative expertise for Content editors, obviously, and an emphasis regard the importance of planning multimedia content with accessibility in mind. >From a technical point of view, I think it is really easy for the authors to make synchronized alternatives tracks, and in my opinion 1.2 L1 SC1 and 1.2 L1 SC2 have the same greatest importance in Multimedia accessibility, so I think the better solution is to maintain them to L1. Without synchronized alternatives movies, animations or slide shows will be a barrier for deaf or hearing impaired, blind or visually impaired viewers and for people with cognitive disabilities, and Multimedia is increasingly important on the Web. Consider that the BBC, by 2008, will be providing subtitles on 100% of programming across the entire BBC network (TV and Web). [2] Best regards, Roberto Ellero 1. http://www.captions.org/softlinks.cfm 2. http://www.redbeemedia.com/access/index.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/jobs/microsites/steno/index.shtml
Received on Friday, 4 November 2005 18:12:08 UTC