Thread Subject: Braille Displays and Television

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From: Jim Allan
Date: Thu, Nov 16 2006 4:50 PM

Re: [teitac-video] Braille Displaysfor televisions...Way back when...I
believe...there was one caption decoder box that had a serial port, and you
could attach a braille display with a serial port to 'read' the stream,
whether you lost data was dependent on the size of the buffer in the braille
display.

the following is end of the day brainstorming...lots of questions

With the caption decoding built into the televisions...getting the
information out of the television is a matter of ports. Do analog
televisions come with ports?
Then there is HDTV and other digital media players (TIVO, cable boxes, etc.)
I know 'televisions' over a certain size are required to have caption
decoding built in.
Are cable boxes required to have caption decoding built-in?
What is a 'television'? A single component with tuner (channel selection),
video display, and speakers? or an assembly of separate components: cable
box (channel selector) plus video display (lcd, plasma, projector, etc.)
plus stereo boosted surround sound?
Will people who use captions be required to purchase a "television" with a
tuner (which cost more) to get the decoding functionality rather that using
the cable box as the tuner and purchasing a much less expensive 'monitor'
(with no tuner)?
Will any of the digital ports allow the splitting off (redirecting) of the
caption data from the video/audio data to be sent to some intermediary
interface between the television and the braille display?

Jim Allan


-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]On Behalf Of Brett, Thomas F
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 4:09 PM
To: TEITAC Audio/Video Subcommittee; TEITAC Audio/Video Subcommittee
Subject: Re: [teitac-video] Braille Displays


yes, I do believe that there would need to be software changes made to
Braille Display software. But I would see more significant changes being
required to the real time captioning since the current captioning does not
work well with screen readers. When I have tested this using FEDRCC I found
that every time the screen refreshed my Jaws would do nothing.

I also see the need to address the captioning done for DVDs. How can that
text be delivered to a Braille display?

Tom Brett


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = on behalf of Victor Tsaran
Sent: Thu 11/16/2006 3:01 PM
To: TEITAC Audio/Video Subcommittee
Subject: Re: [teitac-video] Braille Displays


Hi all,
This is very interesting topic and Tom's suggestion in
particular. I think that Larry's comment was a legitimate one as
well.
Availability of text transcript cannot be equated to reading
captions in realtime with Braille display. In addition, not
every Braille display user will be able to keep up with the text
refresh rate. Thus, some kind of protocol would need to be
developed in order to establish synchronization between the AT
that serves the Braille display and the player. But then we are
not talking about real-time captions, do we?
I do think though that something will need to be done
eventually.
Regards,
Victor


--- Larry Goldberg < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Thomas,
>
> I may be behind the times on this, but is there a refreshable
> Braille
> display that can handle the display of caption text at the
> speed the text is
> sent out? I would think the text of the descriptions would be
> needed to,
> no?
>
> I would suggest that there would need to be some software
> development in the
> field of timed-text to enable the extraction of the caption
> text in a form
> that is compatible with refreshable Braille displays. Short
> of that, I
> would think the availability of transcript becomes even more
> important for
> this audience.
>
> - Larry
>
>
> Brett, Thomas F wrote:
>
> >>> We can certainly make the recommendation that transcript
> versions of
> >>> captions and descriptions are always available.
> >
> > I would think that a Deaf/Blind person should be able to
> access the
> > captioning in a real time mode.
> >
> > Tom Brett,
> > Section 508 Coordinator
> > US Office of Personnel Management
> > Rm 6H34A
> > 2026061206 (v)
> > 2026062582 (tty)
> > Disabled does not mean Unable
> > = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> > [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of
> Hoffman,
> > Allen
> > Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 10:51 AM
> > To: TEITAC Audio/Video Subcommittee
> > Subject: Re: [teitac-video] Braille Displays
> >
> > Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
> > "> Shouldn't there be a provision to insure that this
> information is
> >> available to the Deaf/Blind thru Braille Display?
> >
> > We can certainly make the recommendation that transcript
> versions of
> > captions and descriptions are always available. That is not
> part of the
> > current standard, but we should raise it.
> >
> > Do you want to add your comment to the wiki?
> >
> > AWK"
> > I agree that this is a good idea, it just changes the
> 1194.31 functional
> > requirements. Someone should bring that up, or we should
> cross talk
> > with that group on this topic.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Allen Hoffman -- 202-447-0303
> >

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