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Re: Academic Library Bucks Web Accessibility

for

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Nov 6, 2003 1:53PM

There is no doubt that there are costs associated with captioning, even if
the tool is free.

Time estimation tips for a fifteen minute clip (these are minimum values):

1) Transcription time: 1 hr
2) Caption preparation time: .5 hr
3) Caption timing time: .25 hr
4) Review time: .5 hr
5) Integrate into Web page .25 hr
Total: 2.5 hours for 15 minutes.

So for an hour clip, you are looking at approximately 9.25 hours of work
captioning it.

Possible savings:
1) Using speech recognition software to help with transcription. Some
people report that they get decent results by "echoing" the content. The
software is trained for the person doing the echoing.
2) The transcript should be broken into captions before importing into the
captioning tool. You can do some of this easily (replace end-sentence
punctuation with a double-line break) but you'll then need to break then
sentences into (we recommend) two line captions.
3) Caption timing - this is in theory an amount of time equal to the length
of the video. To do this you need to be very good or be ready to spend more
time editing later.
4) Review time. Much like a paper written for a class, reviewing it at the
time when you are sick of it improves the quality immeasurably. Some
people undoubtedly skip this step to save time. Don't - there will be
errors. Our caption center uses a 2:1 ratio (review time to video length).
Novice captioners require more time.

Consider your options carefully. Captioning is expensive and quality does
make a difference. If you shop around you'll probably find people willing
to caption an hour of video for a couple hundred dollars, which would be
very cheap and you might want to define quality standards carefully before
committing to a large contract.

AWK


On 11/6/03 2:05 PM, "ilana kingsley" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi Rachel,
>
> I've been using MAGpie and will show a demo of it
> tomorrow. They still the cost outweighs the benefits.
> They are concerned with the cost of transcribing the
> audio and/or video. Then they are concerned about the
> amount of time it will take to do the captioning.
>
> Thanks.
>
> --- Rachel Tanenhaus
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> Hello!
>>
>> Are they familiar with MAGpie, produced by NCAM?
>> This can help them
>> provide captioning and description for their A/V
>> products, and they
>> certainly can't complain about the cost. ;)
>>
>> http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/ for more
>> information.
>>
>> -Rachel
>>
>> Rachel H. Tanenhaus, MPH
>> Information Specialist
>> New England ADA & Accessible IT Center
>> 374 Congress Street, Suite 301
>> Boston, MA 02210
>> Phone: (617) 695-0085 (v/tty)
>> or (800) 949-4232 (v/tty) (in New England)
>> Fax: (617) 482-8099
>> E-mail: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> URL: www.NewEnglandADA.org
>>
>>