15 Joe, what do you think of this?

Joe, I’ve often thought that Portland’s TriMet does a damned good job for accessibility. I’m curious to see if you think they’re doing it a right way.

See this example video: Talking Buses . They provide captions on by default and a full transcript is also available below the video.

I have no association with TriMet (other than I ride it) but I have always thought that their web presence with regards to accessibility is miles ahead of any other site I visit.

posted at 08:25 pm on November 18, 2008 by John Lascurettes

16 Remarkably Bad Precedent

At the risk of sounding like either a corporate apologist or a heartless monster, I respectfully beg to differ on the basic argument that underlies this article. Handicapped individuals do not have an intrinsic “right” to force others to provide solutions to every problem that their handicap may cause. Yes, it is in the best interest of humanity not to mention civilization and conscious to assist as best we can in aiding those with disabilities, but that does not mean that governments should impose mandates to force such behavior on masses that will have little or no exposure to the people the laws would assist.

To require every video broadcaster, vlogger, and sound artist publishing on the web to include captions is the digital equivalent of making every home-owner create a ramp so mobility-challenged persons can gain entrance. There is no “right” guaranteeing wheelchair-bound persons a ramp and there is no “right” whereby the blind or deaf can require captions.

I find it a much better solution to be heavy handed in interaction, not enforcement. The US Government requires that all entities doing business with it follow accessibility guidelines or lose their contracts. This suits me just fine as I have no intent on working with the US government, and use my web presence to interact with family and friends. If the owners of a server farm want to be morally upstanding and require that all of their hosted sites be accessibility compliant then so be it – this is the choice of the individual, not the enforced will of a few.

I realize that this article is chiding the public for its refusal to act on suggestions and so the casual reader might dismiss my previous argument, but I would counter that perhaps those preaching the merits of compliance have failed in evangelizing and acquiring the level of grass roots support necessary to achieve their agenda without bludgeoning the public with laws.

posted at 08:52 pm on November 18, 2008 by Jacob Anderson

18 Um ... Jacob has a point

@Joe – you seem to react rather harshly here. You say “Nobody said anything about captioning every vlog” – indeed that is exactly what the article implies, in my opinion.

I think a big issue here is that the web blurs the line between a public space and a private space. In the real world, if you provide a public space, you must provide a wheelchair ramp.

No doubt that Google, YouTube, Apple, and a whole host of others are public spaces. But is a single YouTube video, for example, a public space? Is a political blog a public space or a private one? Is my little blog a private space, unless it gets slashdotted, then its suddenly a public place?

What if I have a personal website with screencasts of how to use different software, will I be required by law to caption it? Does it matter if I make money or not? Does it matter if I’m a corporation or a an individual?

posted at 09:27 pm on November 18, 2008 by Steven Simmons

19 Perhaps an automatic solution is forthcoming ...

On the heels of Google releasing their voice-based search for the iPhone, I wonder how technically feasible it is to out-source your video for automatic captioning (or at least computer-assisted captioning). That would make the “undue burden” bar be much, much lower.

I wonder if, in fact, the burden could be shifted to the video playing software to convert audio content to text content.

If speech reaches the point where it is easily converted to text, then providing one is essentially providing the other, so you would really have no further obligation.

posted at 09:35 pm on November 18, 2008 by Steven Simmons

20 Untitled

‘Handicapped individuals do not have an intrinsic “right” to force others to provide solutions to every problem that their handicap may cause.’

I agree. The implicit assumption of the article is that full access to the content of the internet is a right, not a privilege. Were this the case, the government should prioritize web display standards over all others; introducing widespread access to HTML5, CSS3, and ECMA 3.1 would affect a far greater population (hearing impaired included) than captioning of audio content.

Further, the content generation model is wildly different than the nearest analogue, television. Television content creators operate on multi-million dollar budgets and have little control over who will access their content. On the web, by contrast, the Long Tail is king; web content creators tend to operate on much smaller budgets and cater to much smaller audiences. With this in mind, the litmus test for burdensome becomes “just about everyone”, which makes enforcement difficult, expensive, and ultimately pointless.

Mr. Clark speaks of “Companies [that] have had a long time to get their act together,” which companies? Specifically, which ones? How long is a long time? Web video is barely older than YouTube, which is almost four years old.

posted at 09:36 pm on November 18, 2008 by Nick Husher