BarCamp on Accessible Media @ Stanford on November 1

[Arthur Barstow]

Below is some information about a 1-day BarCamp-type gathering on  
"accessible media" to be held at Stanford on Sunday November 1  
(precedes the W3C's annual TPAC meeting week [1]).

The organizers of this event are Apple's David Singer and Stanford's  
John Foliot. If want to attend, you are asked to contact David or  
John ASAP (contact info at the end).

N.B.:

[[
"To attend the workshop, you must come prepared to present on one of  
the questions above, or a suitable other question, drawing from your  
experience or expertise to help inform the discussion and make  
progress on proposing solutions."
]]

-Regards, Art Barstow

[1] http://www.w3.org/2009/11/TPAC/


Begin forwarded message:

From: ext Philippe Le Hegaret <p...@w3.org>
Date: September 16, 2009 2:49:00 PM EDT
Subject: Re: workshop on Accessible Media

We plan to hold an informal workshop or two on the subject of
Accessibility of Media Elements in HTML 5.  The media elements are  
audio
and video, and their supporting elements such as source.

This will be an informal workshop, as we wish to hold it before the
November 2009 TPAC and there is not sufficient time to announce a  
formal
workshop (six weeks' notice is required
<http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/events.html#GAEvents>).


The current specification of Timed Media elements HTML5 takes a fairly
hard-nosed approach to what is presented as timed media:  it is  
inside the
timed media files that are selected from the sources.
There is currently no provision for linking or synchronizing other
material, and there is no discussion of how to manage the media so  
it's
accessible.  This needs addressing.

We would like to understand the 'landscape' and put in place good
architectural support in general, as well as making sure that specific
solutions exist to the more pressing problems.  We anticipate  
working, in
public, to develop proposals for any changes to specifications that  
might
be suggested by the work, and also to develop a cohesive 'best  
practices'
document that shows how those provisions can be used, by authors,  
by user
agents (browsers), and users, to address the issues we identify.

We are aware that good accessibility rests on four legs (at least):

  1. Proper provision in the specifications and documentation of those
provisions and how to use them;

  2. Willingness and ability to use those provisions effectively on  
the
part of authors;

  3. Provision of the right preferences, tools, and user interfaces in
user agents to enable access to the provisions, perhaps  
automatically; and

  4. The ability of those who need the provisions to find, enable or
access them, and understand what they get.

It's easy to fail on one of these, and good accessibility is not then
achieved.

Accessibility provisions for Timed Media might themselves be timed  
(e.g.
captions) or un-timed (e.g. a readable screen-play or transcript).  We
wish to consider both categories.


The questions we would like to address include, but are not limited  
to the
following:

# What accessibility issues, and what are the 'classic' provisions for
them, in timed media?

We are all aware of captioning for those who cannot hear the audio;  
less
common is audio description of video, for those who cannot see.
The BBC recently had some content that had optional sign-language
overlays.  Issues can also arise with susceptibility (e.g. flashing  
videos
and epilepsy, color vision issues, and so on).


# What solution frameworks already exist that would be relevant?

We are all aware of the existence, for example, of screen readers and
perhaps even Braille output devices.  We've seen tags in other  
parts of
HTML that are there to support accessibility, and frameworks such  
as ARIA.
Are there existing good practices that naturally extend to Timed  
Media?


# Are there solutions that will benefit, be tested and seen by, and  
more
likely authored by, the wider community?

There have been ongoing debates about whether 'unique' provision for
accessibility (functions with no other purpose) are desirable.  We  
do not
intend to have this philosophical debate, but it would be useful to  
hear
of related problems and opportunities that help make the debate
irrelevant.  For example, the provision of a transcript or separately
accessible captions, in text form, makes indexing and searching  
content
much easier.  Are there problems like this that we can address that  
will
make it more likely that authors build accessible timed media?


# What new problems and new opportunities arise when we use digital  
media
embedded in the world-wide-web?

Much of the work and research in this area has been done for isolated,
analog, systems (classic television). Instead, we have a digital  
content
presented in a rich context (web content).  What new opportunities and
solutions are opened up by this?


# What technologies and solutions exist that we should notice?

The work of the W3C on a common Timed Text format, and the  
existence of
general frameworks such as ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet  
Applications),
suggest that there are pieces of the solution space we should  
consider.
What are they?


# What can be done today, given the structures we have? What  
experiments
and proof-of-concept work should we notice?

We are aware that there are a number of pioneering organizations in  
this
area.  The BBC's work with sign-language has already been noted;  
workflows
for captioning content have been developed in a number of places.   
There
have been script-based experiments on captioning.
What are some of these systems and experiments, and what can we  
learn from
them?


This informal workshop will last one day, and the first one will be  
held
in the Bay Area on November 1st at Stanford University.  To attend the
workshop, you must come prepared to present on one of the questions  
above,
or a suitable other question, drawing from your experience or  
expertise to
help inform the discussion and make progress on proposing solutions.

We expect the workshop to spend perhaps two-thirds of the time on  
these
presentations, with short Q&A for each.  Then we may have a panel  
session
or two, or moderated discussion, to address focused questions.  As  
stated
in the introduction, we are looking for a framework and solutions with
good 'longevity', simplicity, and efficacy, that will be embraced  
by the
standards community, content authors, user agent developers, and end
users.  This is ambitious but achievable, we believe, and  
opportunities
such as this to 'get it right from the start' come up all too rarely.

We think that at least the following communities and groups might be
affected:

* HTML 5, the place where the Timed Media tags are specified, and the
integration therefore must occur;
* PFWG, where much thought has gone into this general problem space;
* Media Annotations, who are concerned with metadata for Timed Media;
* Timed Text, owners of DFXP, one of the likely text formats;
* CSS, who define the styling of text, and also the nature of  
'rendering
surfaces' (and a presentation where a provision is needed, such as
captions, might be seen as a rendering surface of a specific kind).


If you feel prepared to attend, present, and work cooperatively on  
this
problem, please contact the workshop organizers as soon as possible.
--
David Singer
Multimedia Standards, Apple Inc.
sin...@apple.com

John Foliot
Stanford University Online Accessibility Program
jfol...@stanford.edu