Re: Practical reality [captioning L1 or L2]

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