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Re: YouTube Accessibility

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From: Ken Petri
Date: Jun 24, 2013 10:20PM

The "interactive transcripts" feature on captioned videos hosted on YouTube
is pretty nice. But like Loretta says the interactive transcript isn't
available if you embed the video in your own web page.

For screen reader users, the HTML5 version of YouTube seems to work pretty
well. (Users can "opt in" to the HTML5 version via http://youtube.com/html5.)
It should be noted that not every video on YouTube has been converted to be
playable in the HTML5 player, though it does seem like newly uploaded
videos are automatically encoded in formats that can use the HTML5 player.
The buttons in the HTML5 player report state properly in a screen reader
and it is possible to use the slider controls for scrubbing through a video
and adjusting volume.

There are a couple of issues that I have noticed:

- The captions themselves are displayed in an overlay that contains them
in an ARIA live region set to "assertive." So when the captions are
showing, each new caption is read aloud in the screen reader as soon as it
appears. While there might be a case where this could be desirable
(deaf-blind users??), for the most part it is a big distraction, and it
seems to me to be an odd/poor choice on Google/YouTube's part. A screen
reader user who is viewing a video in the HTML5 player with captions
exposed will need to move into the video controls and turn off the caption:
Click the "cc" button and arrow through the menu to the "turn off captions"
option.
- I could not get into the captions menu (to enable or disable captions
or select an alternate caption language) using the keyboard alone. You can
do it in a screen reader, but I could find no way to turn captions on and
off solely via keyboard (even in the Flash version of the player or when I
am in "cursor" mode in the browser).


ken

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Loretta Guarino Reid <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> David,
>
> If a YouTube video has captions, there will be a searchable transcript
> available on the watch page. (Note that this is not available if the video
> has been embedded in another page.)
>
> Whenever a video has captions available, there will be a Transcript icon in
> the toolbar below the video (next to "Add To"). Activating the icon will
> list the timestamps and text for all the caption lines, and will highlight
> the line being displayed in the video as it plays. Clicking on any line
> jumps to that point in the video. Use your browser's search function to
> search for text in the transcript area.
>
> Loretta
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:20 PM, David Ashleydale < <EMAIL REMOVED>
> >wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Is YouTube generally considered to be an accessible place for video
> content
> > these days? That is, if a video author was conscientious about
> > accessibility -- created captions, made transcripts available, provided
> > audio description tracks, etc. -- would YouTube be considered a good
> place
> > to post videos in a way that people with disabilities would be able to
> use?
> >
> > I've definitely seen videos on YouTube that have captions, so I know that
> > functionality is available. But I don't think I've ever seen links to
> > transcripts or audio descriptions available. Of course, a video author
> > could post a link to a transcript that is hosted elsewhere if YouTube
> can't
> > host it.
> >
> > Or does YouTube not really have this down yet, and video authors would
> have
> > to host accessible solutions themselves?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > David
> > > > > > > >
> > > >
>
>