Using HTML5 and Javascript to Deliver Text-Based Audio Descriptions

Hello, everybody:

IBM-Research Tokyo recently partnered with the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) at WGBH to research ways to deliver online audio descriptions using text-to-speech (TTS) methods. IBM and NCAM explored two approaches which exploit new HTML5 media elements, Javascript and TTML:

-- Writing and time-stamping a description script, then delivering the descriptions as hidden text in real time in such a way that a user's screen reader will read them aloud. The descriptions remain otherwise invisible and inaudible to non-screen-reader users.
-- Writing and time-stamping descriptions, then recording them using TTS technology. At the time of playback, each description is individually retrieved and played aloud at intervals corresponding to the time-stamped script.

Visit http://ncamftp.wgbh.org/ibm/dvs/ to learn more about the project, view the demonstration models and download the code to see how it works.

Thanks.
Geoff Freed
WGBH/NCAM
(with apologies for cross-posts)