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Re: Classroom Media Playback accessibility

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From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Aug 12, 2019 11:47AM


Hi Laura, burning the captions in would make them less accessible as users could not adjust the size, color, and other aspects of the captions through user styles. WCAG allows for both open or closed captions -- but unless there is some compelling reason why closed captions could fail to load they would be preferable compared to burnt in open captions.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila, CPWA
Chief Accessibility Officer
Level Access
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Laurie Kamrowski
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2019 12:49 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] Classroom Media Playback accessibility

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I tried to google this topic but I don't even know where to start. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I work at a college and we are trying to ensure that we are accessible as possible, not just meeting criteria. We currently have a media library of various films, documentaries, etc... for viewing anywhere on campus, but we were told that we had to have all titles with the subtitles burned into the file themselves. That's not difficult for us, but if we do that - we can only burn them in with one language, typically English. However, if we don't burn the titles in directly, so that we can actively switch between any language on the fly - we were told that this would fail accessibility criteria. Like I said, we're trying to meet the needs of any and every student that we can, and it seems counter intuitive to directly burn the subtitles into the the playback.

Thank you so much,

Laurie Kamrowski
Mid Michigan College
http://www.midmich.edu