It depends whether your objective is WCAG compliance or some more utopian goal. I would say that providing the native file does comply with WCAG even if it is not the optimal user experience.
As always, context is important. Most of our clients are design agencies who are contractually obliged to build websites that comply with WCAG, so that is what we test for. On the other hand, some of our public sector clients are legally mandated to make their websites as accessible as possible, so they probably would not find the provision of native files to be an acceptable solution.
Steve Green
-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Ryan E. Benson
Sent: 07 March 2013 23:02
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Native vs Embedded video
I disagree with Steve. As the content provider, you should be providing the main way to get that content as the accessible way. Making people download a file if they need an accessible version is forcing them to do an extra step - along the lines of seperate-but-equal. Which brings up another point, if you have an inaccessible player, there's a better chance of causing focus trap, so they'll never get out of the player. Therefore never able to get to that download link. I wouldn't adopt this mindset because it could go along with the "oh our video doesn't need to be captioned because there is a transcript."
--
Ryan E. Benson
On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Steve Green
< <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:
> They are talking about the accessibility of the media player controls,
> not the accessibility of the media file.
>
> As such, I am inclined to agree as long as the native file is in a
> 'sensible' format that is well supported. It is possible to get free
> media players for most common file formats for most operating systems,
> albeit that users may well not have these installed, so it would be
> necessary to provide a link from which they can be downloaded.
>
> It would still be necessary for the media files to have captions and
> audio descriptions where appropriate.
>
> Although this solution would be technically compliant, in practice we
> often find that people do not know the keyboard shortcuts for their
> native media player. Of course there is an onus on them to learn how
> to use their machine but I suspect that most people are used to
> playing audio and video through their browser, not the native media player.
>
> Steve Green
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto:
> <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Dona Patrick
> Sent: 07 March 2013 21:25
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: [WebAIM] Native vs Embedded video
>
> I received this question from a developer at work today and I am not
> sure of the answer. I've never heard this and a brief search online
> didn't give me any answers. I am assuming she is talking about
> captioned video. Is she correct?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dona
>
> My understanding of embedded video and audio players is that they
> don't
> > necessarily have to be compliant as long as a download link to the
> > native file is provided. Does that sound right to you?
> > > list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > > list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
>
