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From: Dona Patrick
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 8:33AM
Subject: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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My company is searching for the perfect video player for a number of US
Government clients' websites and there does not seem to be one that works*
in IE, Firefox and Chrome (not to mention the various versions of the
browsers).

Does one exist? If so, what is it?

*By "works" of course I mean is able to be captioned, is keyboard
accessible with and without a screen reader and works with a screen reader
(can be paused, etc)

Thank you,

Dona

From: Brian Richwine
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 8:48AM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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Hello Dona,

You might look into the Able Player, started by Terry Thompson at the
University of Washington. There is a github project for it with a
prioritized bug and requested features list. I know several universities
have taken an interest in it and are actively working at developing it
further.

https://github.com/terrill/ableplayer

-Brian


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:33 AM, Dona Patrick < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:

> My company is searching for the perfect video player for a number of US
> Government clients' websites and there does not seem to be one that works*
> in IE, Firefox and Chrome (not to mention the various versions of the
> browsers).
>
> Does one exist? If so, what is it?
>
> *By "works" of course I mean is able to be captioned, is keyboard
> accessible with and without a screen reader and works with a screen reader
> (can be paused, etc)
>
> Thank you,
>
> Dona
> > > >

From: Bourne, Sarah (ITD)
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 11:21AM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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We looked at the Nomensa video player a few years ago and were very impressed. We loved that it supported YouTube videos and that we could control the style completely. We ran into a problem, however, because the TTML files we were able to produce included timing to milliseconds, and the Nomensa player didn't like that.

On Github: https://github.com/nomensa/Accessible-Media-Player
For Drupal: https://drupal.org/project/nomensa_amp

sb
Sarah E. Bourne
Director of Assistive Technology
Information Technology Division
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
617-626-4502
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://www.mass.gov/itd

From: Olaf Drümmer
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 2:52PM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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What's lacking from the Youtube player these days?

They have added a lot of functionality, e.g. around captioning.

Olaf



On 3 Jun 2014, at 16:33, Dona Patrick < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> My company is searching for the perfect video player for a number of US
> Government clients' websites and there does not seem to be one that works*
> in IE, Firefox and Chrome (not to mention the various versions of the
> browsers).
>
> Does one exist? If so, what is it?
>
> *By "works" of course I mean is able to be captioned, is keyboard
> accessible with and without a screen reader and works with a screen reader
> (can be paused, etc)
>
> Thank you,
>
> Dona
> > >

From: Morin, Gary (NIH/OD) [E]
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 3:04PM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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Please don't forget that an accessible video or multimedia player should (must/shall?) also be usable with speech recognition software, which for example means that I need to be able to know what the code or spoken command is for each of the player actions (e.g., Start, Stop, Fast-Forward, Increase Or Decrease Volume, Repeat, etc.) the icons either need to be labeled with the text or the needs to be a legend someplace easy to find on the screen. Some of the user speech recognition software is typically sighted , not using keyboard, and probably not using the mouse either. Therefore it is impractical to assume that they can mouse over an image or an icon in order to see what word appears underneath it or at the bottom of the screen or in the command line. For example, if I see it right handed arrow, what I say "click forward" or "click play". On a YouTube video, I haven't a clue as to what to tell the player to Skip Ad.

The player also needs to incorporate Audio-Description - by allowing selection of the AD versus the non-AD version, turn on the AD (if there is 'closed AD'),

http://www.howto.gov/social-media/video/508-compliant-video-guide

Has anyone tried the Workshop http://www.theworkshop.co.uk/project/accessible-video-player?

Gary M. Morin, Program Analyst
NIH Office of the Chief Information Officer
10401 Fernwood Rd, Room 3G-17
Bethesda, MD 20892, Mail Stop: 4833

(301) 402-3924 Voice, (301) 451-9326 TTY/NTS
(240) 200 5030 Videophone; (301) 402-4464 Fax

NIH Section 508: http://508.nih.gov<;http://508.nih.gov/>;, NIH Section 508 Coordinators list: https://ocio.nih.gov/ITGovPolicy/NIH508/Pages/Section508Coordinators.aspx

NIH Section 508 Team: mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ?subject=Section 508 Help<mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ?subject=Section%20508%20Help> or, for Section 508 Guidance<http://www.hhs.gov/web/508/index.html>;, http://www.hhs.gov/web/508/index.html

Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to.

what if the first question we asked was, "what is so unique about this situation that it justifies exclusion? instead of, "how much does it cost to make it accessible?

From: Olaf Drümmer
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 3:42PM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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Hi Gary,

I would like to ask - maybe for the sake of a discussion… - : if a video player is fully screen reader enabled - wouldn't that be sufficient for speech based assistive technology to get its job done?

The screen reader's text to speech could read the labels of user interface controls, speech commands could be used to actuate a user interface control while it is the focus of the current selection.

Youtube can have a transcript for a video - a screen reader's text to speech could read this out aloud.

The screen reader itself would obviously have to be speech driven.

Just thinking aloud…


Olaf


On 3 Jun 2014, at 23:04, "Morin, Gary (NIH/OD) [E]" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Please don't forget that an accessible video or multimedia player should (must/shall?) also be usable with speech recognition software, which for example means that I need to be able to know what the code or spoken command is for each of the player actions (e.g., Start, Stop, Fast-Forward, Increase Or Decrease Volume, Repeat, etc.) the icons either need to be labeled with the text or the needs to be a legend someplace easy to find on the screen. Some of the user speech recognition software is typically sighted , not using keyboard, and probably not using the mouse either. Therefore it is impractical to assume that they can mouse over an image or an icon in order to see what word appears underneath it or at the bottom of the screen or in the command line. For example, if I see it right handed arrow, what I say "click forward" or "click play". On a YouTube video, I haven't a clue as to what to tell the player to Skip Ad.
>
> The player also needs to incorporate Audio-Description - by allowing selection of the AD versus the non-AD version, turn on the AD (if there is 'closed AD'),
>
> http://www.howto.gov/social-media/video/508-compliant-video-guide
>
> Has anyone tried the Workshop http://www.theworkshop.co.uk/project/accessible-video-player?
>

From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 4:23PM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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Olaf,

Gary is talking about speech input aka Dragon Naturally Speaking, not
output aka screen reader. If the player has a button that has double right
facing triangles with a label of forward, a person who cannot use a mouse
wouldnt know if they would need to say "forward", "fast forward" or
something else to activate that control.

--
Ryan E. Benson


On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Olaf Drümmer < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Hi Gary,
>
> I would like to ask - maybe for the sake of a discussion… - : if a video
> player is fully screen reader enabled - wouldn't that be sufficient for
> speech based assistive technology to get its job done?
>
> The screen reader's text to speech could read the labels of user interface
> controls, speech commands could be used to actuate a user interface control
> while it is the focus of the current selection.
>
> Youtube can have a transcript for a video - a screen reader's text to
> speech could read this out aloud.
>
> The screen reader itself would obviously have to be speech driven.
>
> Just thinking aloud…
>
>
> Olaf
>
>
> On 3 Jun 2014, at 23:04, "Morin, Gary (NIH/OD) [E]" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> wrote:
>
> > Please don't forget that an accessible video or multimedia player should
> (must/shall?) also be usable with speech recognition software, which for
> example means that I need to be able to know what the code or spoken
> command is for each of the player actions (e.g., Start, Stop, Fast-Forward,
> Increase Or Decrease Volume, Repeat, etc.) the icons either need to be
> labeled with the text or the needs to be a legend someplace easy to find on
> the screen. Some of the user speech recognition software is typically
> sighted , not using keyboard, and probably not using the mouse either.
> Therefore it is impractical to assume that they can mouse over an image or
> an icon in order to see what word appears underneath it or at the bottom of
> the screen or in the command line. For example, if I see it right handed
> arrow, what I say "click forward" or "click play". On a YouTube video, I
> haven't a clue as to what to tell the player to Skip Ad.
> >
> > The player also needs to incorporate Audio-Description - by allowing
> selection of the AD versus the non-AD version, turn on the AD (if there is
> 'closed AD'),
> >
> > http://www.howto.gov/social-media/video/508-compliant-video-guide
> >
> > Has anyone tried the Workshop
> http://www.theworkshop.co.uk/project/accessible-video-player?
> >
>
> > > >

From: Lucy Greco
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 5:02PM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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Hello:
this is a very interesting topic to me. I met with a few people at CSUN
to talk about how we could improve this particular problem. Unfortunately
speech recognition currently does not interact with the source code in any
way and does not interpret rendered webpages.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the most commonly used speech recognition
package for both Mac and PC. However, Dragon does not recognize elements
on the web similar to screen readers. This case is an example of
sometimes the screen reader user has a better experience than the
non-screen reader user. If I am using J-say the bridging application
between jaws and Dragon I'm able to do much more on the web than a Dragon
only user. For example since JAWS recognizes elements that are coded to
be buttons using the aria role of button I can say click the button and
Dragon will do so. However Dragon does not recognize the aria role and
the element is not seen as a button to Dragon so saying click the button
will do nothing in the case of a dragon only user.

In the last release of Dragon Nuance included some support for accessing
Gmail but none of that was able to be used anywhere else on the web.

The group of us at CSUN did not have enough time to talk more than just
outlining the problem. We need to encourage Nuance to start incorporating
recognition for HTML 5 and aria in their product. It's very difficult for
a speech input user to work with any controls currently on the web without
appropriate labeling and we've begun the uphill climb for labeling for
screen readers I can't imagine how long it will be for speech input users.

Lucia Greco
Web Accessibility Evangelist
IST - Architecture, Platforms, and Integration
University of California, Berkeley
(510) 289-6008 skype: lucia1-greco
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu
Follow me on twitter @accessaces

From: Jennifer Sutton
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 5:09PM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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Greetings:

Here's this article that outlines the requirements for an accessible
media player. Perhaps some might find it helpful. The comments are
worth a skim; Sarah's made a good point, for example. See:

Specification for an accessible video-media player Coolfields Consulting
http://www.coolfields.co.uk/2014/01/specification-for-accessible-video-media-player/

Best,
Jennifer

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 8:05PM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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> What's lacking from the Youtube player these days?

Audio description support. Youtube has the great option to overlay songs
over a video with cuepoints -- but you have to use their approved song
list and last time I checked you couldn't overlay another audio file with
audio description. They are so close but yet not there yet.

Jonathan

From: Lucy Greco
Date: Tue, Jun 03 2014 10:10PM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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Have you seen the you describe project they now have inline description for
YouTube videos
Youdiscribe.org


Lucia Greco
Web Accessibility Evangelist
IST - Architecture, Platforms, and Integration
University of California, Berkeley
(510) 289-6008 skype: lucia1-greco
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu
follow me on twitter @accessaces

From: Dona Patrick
Date: Wed, Jun 04 2014 8:39AM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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Thanks everyone for your comments regarding accessible video players. I
have passed on the recommendations to my colleagues at work. We're likely
going with YouTube with customization for now since we are on a tight
deadline and many of this particular agency's Websites use it, but will
definitely look into some of the other players mentioned for the future.

Dona


On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 12:10 AM, Lucy Greco < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Have you seen the you describe project they now have inline description
> for
> YouTube videos
> Youdiscribe.org
>
>
> Lucia Greco
> Web Accessibility Evangelist
> IST - Architecture, Platforms, and Integration
> University of California, Berkeley
> (510) 289-6008 skype: lucia1-greco
> http://webaccess.berkeley.edu
> follow me on twitter @accessaces
>
>

From: Olaf Drümmer
Date: Wed, Jun 04 2014 9:01AM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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Ryan,

On 4 Jun 2014, at 00:23, Ryan E. Benson < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Olaf,
>
> Gary is talking about speech input aka Dragon Naturally Speaking, not
> output aka screen reader.

please be aware that a screenreader is not the same as a text to speech feature. Instead, a screenreader works in both directions:
- retrieve info on the screen and present it (using text to speech, Braille, …)
- provide some mechanism to act on a currently selected user interface control

The "act on a currently selected user interface control" could be driven by speech input.

The fact that Dragon Naturally Speaking does not currently take advantage of this does not invalidate the concept.

I think it is important to begin to see more clearly that we [the community interested in accessible IT] should work towards an architecture, where a general purpose accessibility layer sits between the application / content one side, and the tool used to interact with the application / content on the other side. It is not a good idea to teach each and every AT (whether Dragon Naturally Speaking or any other) to be able to interact with specific applications (a certain browser, or a certain word processor, or…. ) or specific content/file formats (a certain version of HTML, Word, PDF, …).

> If the player has a button that has double right
> facing triangles with a label of forward, a person who cannot use a mouse
> wouldnt know if they would need to say "forward", "fast forward" or
> something else to activate that control.

if the button is accessible it will have an alt text or similar information - which is all that's needed in my scenario.

Olaf

From: Jonathan H
Date: Wed, Jun 11 2014 5:10AM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
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On 3 June 2014 15:48, Brian Richwine < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

>
> You might look into the Able Player,


Darn it, wish I'd know about that a few months back! As it happens, I've
been spending quite literally months on and off building an accessible
player with a small group of "trusted testers".

Before you read any further, I'd like you to go and have a play with this
early beta without any preconception of how it SHOULD work.
Then come back here and read on if you wouldn't mind. Here's the link to
the TEST player.
https://googledrive.com/host/0B2NJeY_BTHQfUjk1RlNXbXFuZlU/

Welcome back! The basis for the player is the jPlayer project, but with a
completely new skin using the html5 elements like "progress", along with
some polyfills.

The target audience are listeners of talking newspapers, the output of
which is either generally one long file of over an hour sometimes, or up to
30 short files forming a playlist.

So it was important to have easy and rapid time navigation within long
tracks, but also fast and easy access to multiple items in a playlist.

Feedback also showed a large gulf between the reading speed of the
volunteers, and the speed that SOME listeners wanted to listen at. So
controls affecting speed, but not pitch, were essential.

And it must be able to be totally keyboard drivable.

Happyworm, who created jPlayer, have been extremely helpful, making heavy
modification to the core player and playlist code to make it accessible.
If this passes the "group" test, then those changes will make it into the
main build, benefitting everyone.

However, I've encountered many problems along the way with differing
browsers and screen readers and managed to overcome most.

Let me take you through the page, top to bottom, and explain where I think
it wins, where it fails, and where I need further advice.

My biggest problem is that I am having MAJOR issues with the Aria alert
role. This was to be a key feature of the player, and in early tests it was
well loved - the idea is that you press "pause", and an aria alert would
fire off saying something like "track 2 of 7 paused 2 minutes and 7 seconds
into the 7 minute track titled Broccoli from the playlist Waitrose Kitchen
April 2014".

I have spend DAYS trying to get this working with IE and Firefox and NVDA
and Jaws all at the same time. I've tried hack after fudge after
workaround, and still it only works on 2/3 combinations at a time.
(And right now I seem to have killed it altogether - back to the drawing
board on that one!) If anyone wants, I'll post my notes and hacks I've
tried from various sites.

The next problem is that if I use the aria-valuetext to make the progress
bar say "percent" after the number, it crashes Chromevox (bug filed and
confirmed). So I've had to put that to one side for now (yes, I know very
few people use Chromevox - tricky one!).

If I use the default html5 progress element, or set an aria role of
"progress" on the progress bar/slider, then NVDA constantly "beeps" the
progress status - correct, but not desired.

If I set role="status" on the progress bar, it behaves very nicely across
all screenreaders and browsers I tested - if the progress bar is on focus
or being moved, it gives you a quick update every ten percent, if not, it's
quiet.
Perfect! Except.. the W3 validator says: "Bad value status for attribute
role on element progress".

I know the general feeling is "accessibility over validity every time", but
it's a shame as that's the only fail in a page I worked hard to get valid.
What say you?

Also, in IE and Firefox, the progress bar time slider works properly when
keyboard driven, but in Chrome it doesn't, responding only to being
mouse-dragged.

I have a fairly hefty table of conflicts and problems with various browsers
and screenreader combinations.

For example, NVDA does not speak announced accesskeys involving the minus
(dash - ie accesskey="-" ) but JAWS behaves itself, and the accesskey
itself works.

I know accesskeys are a bone of contention - I'm trying to lay out the
player so that the controls can be totally "tab and enter" driven, not
relying on accesskeys at all, or at least making them purely optional.

Can anyone suggest a better layout to allow easy skipping from, say,
selecting a playlist item, to jumping back to the controls?

Nice accidental Firefox feature: When focussed on timeskip keys, it's skips
30 seconds using space, 1 minute using enter key.

Some older browsers don't have the option to change the HTML5 playback
rate, nor does the flash fallback for obsolete browsers.
Should the "playback rate" option be hidden from users whose browsers don't
have this method?

Talking of older browser, although I note from
http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey5/#primary that a startling
amount of users are stuck on dangerously obsolete versions of IE, that is a
worldwide survey. I've seen less than 1% of my site users on IE versions
lower than IE9. It seems from surveys that the most popular browser
combinations are IE with JAWS and Firefox with NVDA, so those will be my
primary focus first.

Right, I'll stop there for now - a few other good things that have come out
of this are that I've filed two NVDA bugs which have been fixed, one
Chromevox bug which is filtering its way through dev channels, and a fairly
serious Chrome bug affecting all keyboard users which has gone totally
unactioned for months, despite the 25+ stars you lovely people gave, and
big thanks to Steve Faulkner for at least switching it back from "feature"
to "bug" after some Chrome dev thought that accessibility is a "feature
request". I now understand what the accessibility community is up against
sometimes!

Thanks for any input and thoughts.

From: Joe Chidzik
Date: Wed, Jun 11 2014 6:24AM
Subject: Re: Does an accessible video player that works correctly in all major browsers exist?
← Previous message | No next message

> If I set role="status" on the progress bar, it behaves very nicely across all
> screenreaders and browsers I tested - if the progress bar is on focus or being
> moved, it gives you a quick update every ten percent, if not, it's quiet.
> Perfect! Except.. the W3 validator says: "Bad value status for attribute role on
> element progress".
>
> I know the general feeling is "accessibility over validity every time", but it's a
> shame as that's the only fail in a page I worked hard to get valid.
> What say you?

Can you just write that attribute namevalue into the page at runtime via JavaScript? This issue would not then prevent validation as the validator will check the page pre-JavaScript. Bit hacky admittedly, but then I don't see why an attribute value should fail validation anyway - any unrecognised attribute values are just ignored by browsers afaik.

Joe