WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Podcasting and Accessibility

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From: Jennifer Sutton
Date: Feb 1, 2006 2:30PM

Hi all:

I've been following podcasting fairly closely, and I'll just toss out
a few points for consideration:

1. Has anybody tried iTunes with a screen reader? It's not pretty,
and it's not even pretty on a Mac with VoiceOver (or so I hear). So,
if you've got blind screen reader users who work on the Windows
platform, they need Juice. And a very accessible app. it is, thanks
to a lot of work by the blind community, and a commitment from the
app.'s original developer.

As far as I can tell, Mac and Linux users who are blind frequently
roll their own scripts to "get" content, running it as a "chron
job." There are some open source app.s (pumped up scripts) floating
around, but that's a bit out of my league.

2. Since podcasts are often (but not always) mp3s, they can be
played on a range of playback devices, but bravo to you, Kynn, for
pointing out the need for accessible players. DAISY players that use
Flash cards are one option to keep in mind.

3. Synchronizing an audio file with text, via SMIL, after the fact
would, I think, be rather a tricky business. Has anybody tried it
with a DAISY production tool?

4. Podcasts are all about the subscribing and not about the medium,
or that's what I believe. As someone (Tim?) said, RSS 2.0 with
enclosures is the key (what makes this new, not just hype), and a
fantastic development it is, or can be.

5. I find it interesting that, on WebAIM, nobody's brought up the
issue of Web accessibility and podcasting, yet. Or did I miss it?

Some of what's being built to support podcasters and podcast
listeners needs some SERIOUS help i.e. Web applications, Web sites, and so on.

Joe Amateur, who is just podcasting from his basement probably won't
be able to learn and implement Web standards, but there are plenty of
podcasters with technical skill. At least many podcasts come from
blogs, and depending upon how people configure their blogging
software, sites can be fairly easy to negotiate with a screen
reader. But I don't want to imply that accessibility equates to ONLY
screen reader users, by any means.

I hope some of my thinking may prove useful.

Best,
Jennifer