Audio Access

        Reply to:   Audio Access


Somehow I missed Gregg's 7/28 posting about ideas for access to audio information, as well as Greg Lowney's responses.  In any event, I have added couple comments [in square brackets].  I hope I'm not too late.


PAGE CREATOR GUIDELINES

	P1) AUDIO TEXT NOTIFICATION - All pages with autoplay audio
should have a notice alerting the user to the presence of the audio.  If
the audio is decorative then the notice would usually be at the bottom
of the page.  If the audio provides directions or is otherwise important
to the use of the page then the notice should be at the top of the page.
This notice can also act as the anchor for a description or
transcription of the audio.

P2)  AUDIO DESCRIPTION/TRANSCRIPTION -  All audio files should
have a SEPARATE TEXT DESCRIPTION or TRANSCRIPTION of the audio.  This
audio text should be in a form that can be easily displayed in a
browser. (we will need a standard for this).   (Transcription is for
text,  description is for sounds)

[I think if you're talking about a page that automatically plays a sound or speaks when you land on that page, the sound or speech should have a visual representation that is automatically displayed.  In other words, a deaf user shouldn't have to choose a link in order to see information if the hearing person doesn't have to choose a link in order to hear the same information.  (This is different from P4, below.)

[Decorative sounds should always carry a description-- on television, closed captions display *sound effect* captions to alert the viewer to important non-verbal information.  The same should be true on the Web.  Again, this information should be automatically displayed.  Also, am I assuming correctly that when you say "bottom of the page" that the sound description will be visible at the bottom of the *first screen*, so the user doesn't have to scroll down in order to read a description of a sound that is played when the page is opened?

[When I think about it... if you're automatically displaying a discription of a sound or a transcription of speech, does it make sense to display one at the top and one at the bottom?  It may be simpler just to display all information in the same location and use a title or ID of some kind to differentiate the two.]

P4) Pages should provide a link to the transcription file next
to any links to audio files (until such time that all browsers allow
access to transcriptions from the audio file link).   They should also
provide references to the transcription (?TEXT=) and the synch file
(?SYNCH=) within the audio file or movie link (for those browsers that
do support synched text).

[When browsers allow access to transcriptions from the audio player (from a button on the player interface, for example), there should still be a link to the transcript placed next to the link to the audio file.  A deaf person shouldn't have to turn on the audio player in order to get to the transcription.]

Geoff Freed
NCAM

Received on Thursday, 14 August 1997 11:02:25 UTC