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From: John Foliot
Date: Wed, Feb 04 2009 11:40AM
Subject: Captioning, Transcripts and a Teachable moment
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All,



Many of you already know that I am passionate about getting transcripts
and captioning added to on-line videos. I've always tried to frame the
dialogue around the greater benefit captioning/transcripts provide to all
users, not just those in a particular disabled community.



Back before Christmas, I was approached by a web developer who was working
on a project for NASA: an out-reach program geared towards students at
all levels (K-4 through "higher ed") that essentially encouraged students
to use NASA Videos and create "remixes". Since NASA is clearly a Section
508 respondent, the preview videos on NASA's site required captioning
(Section 508 - b. Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation
shall be synchronized with the presentation), but the developer was
curious what to do regarding the videos being offered as downloads.
Somehow, she ended up IM'ing me at work and we had an interesting
exchange.



After a bit of discussion, I proposed that they (NASA) include numerous
'pieces' of digital data in a zip file, and some of those bits would be
the time-stamped transcript and 'flat' transcript, so that the students
would have those pieces of the total 'picture' to use and remix at the
same time that they mixed and mashed their visual media.



NASA agreed!



Late last week, the site was launched - a review page can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/bmptxd . While a "How to Add Captioning" tutorial is
still not available (note to self - contact the contractor to discuss),
"on-it" educators at least now have the tools to take the ball and run
with it: not only will students be learning about space related topics,
but the potential for learning 'multi-media production' (which is clearly
also part of the bigger picture) that is inclusionary (through the
addition of captions) exists - students can be taught that adding captions
is simply part of the bigger production work-flow. The current 'hard
part' - getting the transcript - has been done already by NASA, so
remixing and adding 'new' caption files to the 'new' videos is relatively
easy and teachable.



Or at least, that is my hope. For those of you reading this and who are
involved in teaching, alt media production or a related endeavor, I ask
that maybe you help push that ball along as well. NASA has given us a
great starting point, but we, accessibility advocates, need to help
highlight that great start, and help other educators seize that start
point and work it. It would be *SO COOL* to start seeing these
Student/NASA remixes on YouTube with captions (YouTube now supports .srt
caption files), so let's go do it!



Thanks!



JF



See also:

. Stanford Captioning: http://captioning.stanford.edu

. WebAIM - Web Captioning Overview:
http://webaim.org/techniques/captions/

. YouTube - Add captions or subtitle tracks to your videos:
http://www.youtube.com/t/captions_about

. JW FLV Player (A sweet little FLASH based player that scores
incredibly high marks for accessibility supporting Closed Captions *AND*
descriptive audio):
http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/tutorials/Making-Video-Accessible

. Easy YouTube Player (Christian Heilmann's remixed YouTube
player): http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube/

. Captioning Media for iTunes:
http://soap.stanford.edu/show.php?contentid=89





(Hey listees - have any other great resources? Post them to the list!)

From: Laura Carlson
Date: Thu, Feb 05 2009 6:35AM
Subject: Re: Captioning, Transcripts and a Teachable moment
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Hi John,

This is excellent. Thank you for taking initiative and leading this
effort.

> have any other great resources? Post them to the list

I have some listed at:
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/accessibility#captioning