Re: [UACCESS-L] New prototype of YouTube currently doesn't do "ads,captions, or annotations", is that a problem?

[Larry Goldberg <larry_goldberg@wgbh.org>]

Title: Re: [UACCESS-L] New prototype of YouTube currently doesn't do "ads, captions, or annotations", is that a problem?

Robert raises an important point about HTML5 and accessibility.

Luckily, the ongoing development of HTML5 and its video handling capability includes an active effort within the development community to establish a standard for captioning, audio description and other access services synchronized with the new open source video codecs that are a key component of HTML5’s roll-out.

So while the initial announcement by Google/YouTube indicated lack of support for captions (among a number of other less-essential), be assured that the developers of HTML5 are very well-aware of the need and are working toward a common standard that will be compatible with other forms of timed text.

Not sure of the timeline for this, but a search for HTML5, captions, video will yield various efforts being pursued by the Mozilla Foundation, he W3C and others.

... Larry ...

Larry Goldberg, Director
Media Access Group at WGBH

The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family
National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM)

One Guest Street
Boston, MA  02135

617.300.3722 (voice/fax)
617.300.2489 (TTY)

Larry_Goldberg@WGBH.org
access.wgbh.org

Follow the Media Access Group at WGBH on Facebook.

---

From: Robert Carnegie <Robert.Carnegie@seemis.gov.uk>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:28:58 -0500
To: Uaccess-L <uaccess-l@trace.wisc.edu>
Subject: [UACCESS-L] New prototype of YouTube currently doesn't do "ads, captions, or annotations", is that a problem?

Headsup - I don't know where Google and YouTube currently are with
accessibility, but their next development appears to be this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/22/youtube_html5_player/

> Provided you have the right browser, "HTML5 on YouTube" -
> as Google calls it - lets you view videos without a Flash plug-in.
> Or any other plug-in, for that matter. It does not yet support
> videos with ads, captions, or annotations, but Google says:
> "We will be expanding the capabilities of the player in the future,
> so get ready for new and improved versions in the months to come."

If that means "currently no subtitles", it wants watching to be sure
that "new and improved versions" don't have discrimination built-in to
the new product - whether it is declared finished at some point, or
allowed to be an officially incomplete "beta" edition for years.

Also the player buttons should be Accessible... anything else?

Also for this trial service you need an HTML 5 browser that supports
H.264 video (so do accessibility questions apply to the browser and not
to this service, or to both?), so from what it says here, Google's
Chrome or Apple's, um, it's in Safari I assume.  Out of the other
"normal" browsers, Opera and Firefox apparently are only providing the
Ogg flavour of HTML 5 video support.  Microsoft, nothing at all, yet,
probably their own(?).  Linux - including Opera and Firefox Linux
versions - I don't know about, but I suppose open-standard Ogg is what
you expect to find there.

So this and other web-based video services probably need to have both
H.264 and Ogg provision at least, to be compatible with, um, in this
case, browsers other than the service provider's own one.  That may bear
on whether wider compatibility is considered a priority.


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