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Re: Captions and transcripts

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jan 6, 2012 11:42AM

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 11:20 AM, Randy Pope < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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?

For WCAG Level A conformance of video, you must have captions. You
also must have a transcript OR audio descriptions. For Level AA, you
must provide audio descriptions. For Level AAA, you must also provide
a transcript (if you didn't for Level A) and a sign language
alternative.

Of note is that if you provide audio descriptions (of if your video
does not require audio descriptions because all visual content is
presented via audio), you aren't required to provide a transcript
until Level AAA. This, I believe, is very inadequate as neither
captions or audio description provide adequate accessibility for many
users (deaf-blind, etc.).

If you provide a sign language alternative, you will have already had
to provide captions at Level A, so no, I don't believe there is a
requirement to also caption the sign language version as this will
already be available. However, the video could be authored to contain
both the sign language alternative AND the captions (AND even audio
descriptions) in one video presentation.

It's all rather confusing, isn't it?

> After all there are language
> programs that translate English into their native language but nothing to
> translated it into ASL.

There are some technologies that are attempting automated ASL
generation from text. Like all translation technologies, these are far
from perfect.

Jared