Captions in HTML 5

I think as HTML 5 seeks public comments, as a group we need to make a
comment about the current state of captions in HTML 5. It does not appear
easy to do this.

 

In our WCAG 2.0 group discussions around captions many years back, we moved
captions to a Level A requirement based partially on the assumption that
tools of the future would figure out how to make this very easy. Well that
time should be now, I think. The HTML 5 video element needs to provide a
very simple way to load up a caption file into the player and link it.
YouTube has done this to their player (albeit in another technology), and
the W3C should do it to the HTML 5 element. Otherwise we risk the
proliferation of non-captioned video all over the web, and since the video
element is so easy in HTML 5, it would be an encouragement for authors to
avoid the more daunting task of figuring out how to link it to a caption
file.

 

I realize that captions can be linked to the video element currently, but I
think it's more complicated than it should to be.

 

David MacDonald

www.eramp.com