Hi All Roberto Ellero, who started the work group Webmultimediale.org and is member of the W3C work group elaborating version 2.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), sent me the reference of his announcement to the mailing list of this W3C work group, concerning the Internet video player with switchable multilingual subtitles and inserted smaller window for Sign Language version, developped by Alessio Cartocci:
"A Flash player with Smil support to meet GL 1.2, SC 1.2.5" <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2007AprJun/0080.html>, Wed, 2 May 2007 where he gives an accurate technical description of the player, an example of which can be seen in <http://www.webmultimediale.org/SC_1.2.5/> >From my non techie beta-tester's viewpoint: - Using a SMIL file (1) as a hub/cogwheel to synchronize the various other involved files (video, audio, captioning text files) means that you don't have to have a video editing software to insert the subtitles in the video: they stay put in the lower part of the player. - The captioning text files used in the player can -> be made by anyone with some kind of text editing software (even very rudimental) , which means the work-load can be divided easily between several people -> also be copy-pasted in a web page (2) - You can resize the player using the character size option in the View menu of your browser, and you can resize and move the window for the Sign Language video. - You can offer all the features (main video, sign language video, original and dubbed audio files, audio captioning for blind people, captioning text files) or only activate some by modifying the relevant lines in the SMIL file. - Re the fact mentioned by Robert Ellero in his post to the WCAG 2.0 list, that this SMIL-based player also works with streaming flash video files, and not only with formats traditionally considered as SMIL-compatible: I don't understand all the implications, but it means that you can caption such a streaming flash file without having to use a flash editing software, and streaming flash requires less bandwidth than other formats. Summing up: this player not only satisfies the WCAG requirements of captioning and offering a SL version for multimedia objects, but it can also be used to give a wider audience to multimedia content produced in a minority language and, viceversa, make existing multimedia content available in a minority language, without need of expensive video editing software. For further information, please write directly to either Roberto Ellero or Alessio Cartocci, whose addresses appear in the already mentioned post to the WCAG mailing list, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2007AprJun/0080.html, because my "beta-testing" was strictly non technical. Best Claude (1) Re SMIL, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronized_Multimedia_Integration_Language and http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo (2) In the case of a former version of the player, which did not yet offer the smaller video window for SL translation, used in Barbara Bordato's post on Amanda Baggs' "In My Language" videohttp://www.webmultimediale.org/barbara/2007/03/in_my_language.html, I first copy-pasted the text transcript of Amanda Baggs' original subtitles, plus the French, German, and Italian captioning files by Anna Veronese and me in http://noimedia.wikispaces.com/Amanda+Baggs, which Marietta Cathomas used when she accepted to do the Grischun-Rumantsch captioning (which I in turn copy-pasted in the same wiki page) -- Claude Almansi v. Cantonale 22 CH-6532 Castione tel. +41 (0)91 829 04 51 cell. +41 (0)76 401 85 69 gruppo di lavoro Noi Media www.noimedia.org Swiss Internet User Group www.siug.ch _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
