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
