WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Evaluation: Accessible Interface to YouTube

for

From: Iza Bartosiewicz
Date: Apr 30, 2009 7:40PM

Hi Tom,

Are you aware of a similar project by Chris Heilmann? He called it the Easy YouTube Player http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube/. There is also a video on how this player works with a screen reader: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=QiuT0y0KR6I.

I've noticed that, just like your player, it does not support open captions, making it less accessible to people with hearing disabilities. I've used this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRS8MkLhQmM as a test.

So, I agree with John; it would be great if you could find a way of enabling closed captions on your player.

I hope this player will live beyond your uni project!

Best wishes

Iza

PS. I'm going to post your request to a couple of mailing lists I'm on: WANAU (Web Accessibility Network for Australian Universities) http://www.wanau.org and AATUG (The Australian Adapted Technology User Group) http://www.aatug.answd.org/. Hope you'll get some responses.

--

----
Izabella Bartosiewicz
Library Website Coordinator
RMIT University

p 03 9925 3103
e <EMAIL REMOVED>
h www.rmit.edu.au/library

Save a tree... Don't print this email unless you have to...


>>> On 30/04/09 at 9:06, Randi < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Tom,
>
> Thank you for clearing that up. I will go check it out. I also wanted
> to comment that having a search box easily found is nice. I like it at
> the top of the screen. Though I suppose some people might browse
> through header links and then search if they don't find something.
> IDK, but I like it up top. I'll go check it out now.
>
> On 4/29/09, John E. Brandt < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> Curious project Tom. But I am wondering why you limited the accessibility
>> question to only people with visual disabilities.
>>
>> There are a number of people with hearing disabilities using YT. Many use
>> the YT videos to communicate with others via sign language - sort of "sign
>> language blogs." Yet, the vast majority of YT content is not captioned,
>> transcribed - nor has a signed component.
>>
>> YT does have the capacity (now) to add captioning and in fact I created a YT
>> video with captioning as a test. But when I viewed this video using your
>> "accessible YouTube" interface, there was no way to turn the captioning on
>> making is thus, less accessible. Is there a way to adapt your system to
>> include the captioning if it so exists on a particular YT video?
>>
>> Good luck with you dissertation.
>>
>> ~j
>>
>> John E. Brandt
>> Web Design, Development, Consultation
>> Augusta, Maine USA
>> www.jebswebs.com
>> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> 207-622-7937
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Thomas Jolliffe
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 3:09 PM
>> To: WebAIM Discussion List
>> Subject: [WebAIM] Evaluation: Accessible Interface to YouTube
>>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I can't claim to be a long-term subscriber, but I'd appreciate a favour if
>> possible. I'm a final-year Computer Science student at Newcastle University
>> and for my dissertation I've been investigating the effect which what we
>> call "Web 2.0" has had on accessibility.
>>
>> As part of this investigation, I've implemented what I think are some good
>> practices, and to demonstrate a number of them working together I've created
>> a somewhat simplified interface for YouTube, which you can find at
>> http://tube.majestyc.net/. It makes use of technologies such as JavaScript,
>> in line with what we can reasonably expect on the web nowadays, but also of
>> things like WAI-ARIA live regions to aid the use of such dynamic scripting.
>> Similarly, the video player uses a Flash object, but controlled by
>> JavaScript firing from standard HTML buttons, instead of using buttons
>> integrated into the Flash object itself.
>>
>> In order to evaluate what real-world users think, I've set up an online
>> questionnaire, available at the horrible address of
>> http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/128706/accessible-youtube, and via TinyURL at
>> http://tinyurl.com/aiyt-eval. It's built using the website Survey Gizmo and,
>> while it's not exactly perfect from an accessibility perspective, it's a
>> pretty clean page and after a quick run-through myself with JAWS I didn't
>> find too many glaring problems. I'd have liked to have built a system
>> myself, but unfortunately simply haven't had time.
>>
>> Some people have questioned my use of YouTube, given that many of the site's
>> intended audience will have visual impairments. However, not only is it a
>> good demonstration of multimedia on the web, I don't think we shouldn't
>> dismiss a video site outright. So many users are partially sighted, and the
>> impact of YouTube across the web - and, arguably, society - has been
>> enormous. And, let's not forget, it provides audio as well as video.
>>
>> Many thanks in anticipation of your responses, every single one is greatly
>> appreciated. I am running somewhat behind schedule, so I'm looking to gather
>> as many responses as possible in the next few days. If anyone knows of a
>> good place to post this, let me know, or feel free to simply quote this
>> message.
>>
>> There's a link on the 'Thanks' page to email me if you'd like to see an
>> electronic copy of my dissertation when it's finished, but anyone
>> (questionnaire or no questionnaire) is welcome to email me directly and I'll
>> add you to the list.
>>
>> Once again, you can find the site at http://tube.majestyc.net/ and the
>> questionnaire at http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/128706/accessible-youtube (or,
>> if you trust a TinyURL link, at http://tinyurl.com/aiyt-eval).
>>
>> Thanks for reading,
>> Tom
>>
>>