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Re: Captions and transcripts

for

From: Randy Pope
Date: Jan 6, 2012 11:21AM

For the deaf-blind people who cannot see or hear, that recommendation would
be suitable if the caption is accessible for those who read the content in
braille and not voice. Otherwise a transcript is needed in addition to the
caption on the video. I know this is a lot of work but most website are not
using the technology that will enable the braille readers to read the
caption on the screen plus the visual description.

Then there is another situation when the video is done in American Sign
Language (ASL) but not in caption for those who don't know ASL. So this
bring this question: should these videos be in caption too?

Since there are some deaf whose first language is ASL and do not understand
English in written form, should there be an alternative format such a video
in ASL that interpret the content on the web? After all there are language
programs that translate English into their native language but nothing to
translated it into ASL.

Just some thoughts I like to throw. Take care.

With Warm Regards,
Randy Pope

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jared Smith
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2012 12:12 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Captions and transcripts

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 9:11 AM, Kevin White < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Captions are not needed when the synchronized media is, itself, an
alternate presentation of information that is also presented via text on the
Web page.

Note that this same allowance is provided for transcripts (what WCAG call
"alternative for time-based media") and audio descriptions.

I'm the one that recommended this addition to WCAG 2.0. The point was that
if the main content of the page is identical to the video content, and both
are presented together (particularly when the video is provided to enhance
accessibility of that main content to some users), requiring captions, a
transcript, and/or audio descriptions would simply be yet another
unnecessary duplication of this content that is already fully accessible. In
other words, if the video is an equivalent alternative to the main content,
then these additional alternatives are not required.

It would be hard to argue that a video is an equivalent alternative to its
own transcript. Instead, the transcript is the alternative to the video. In
other words, you wouldn't have provided the transcript if you didn't have a
video there. In this case, the captions AND the transcript (or, if you
prefer, audio descriptions for Level A and AA
conformance) are required.

Hopefully that makes a bit of sense.

Jared