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Re: Evaluation: Accessible Interface to YouTube

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From: Randi
Date: Apr 29, 2009 5:40PM


Tom,

WOW BRAVO! I love it. I absolutely love it!! Where do I start? I went
to the search box and typed the first thing that came to mind. An
audio of Dr. Demento Boulbous Bouffant. I know I didn't spell it
right, but it took me straight to it. This thing has made me laugh for
years and I haven't heard it in years. I listened all the way through
before exploring.

I absolutely LOVE that I can start it and pause it and skip at my
will. As you know, that is not possible on youtube and I've discussed
this with other blind people as well. I am going to share this on
another list I'm on and ask them to give you feedback as well.

I LOVE that its not cluttered. I love that there aren't all those
headers. The comment section is nice but I never really read those
anyway haha. I didn't explore the next ten option at all but I will
play with it again. I've already bookmarked it.

Twho things that I would add. I could hear the controls pretty well
over the video until the video got a little loud. I have Voiceover set
to maximum volume, but the video still kind of drowns out the
controls. So if there would be a way to add volume control for the
video too, that would be great. If its there, I missed it in my
excitement. Also, a feature I missed was the embed links and such, for
putting a video on Facebook. This is solved easily enough by just
copying the URL like I did:

http://tube.majestyc.net/?v=cMfmzEpvW-http://tube.majestyc.net/?v=cMfmzEpvW-g

I pasted it to see if the link works.

Other than that, I can't think of anything to add right now. I know
someone did accessibletwitter.com for the same purpose, so will you do
something like that with this? I would hate to see you stop after your
dissertation. You are going to be valuable to us, I gotta tell ya.
Please don't ever take it down tee hee.

Excellent!
Randi

On 4/29/09, 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
>>
>>