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Re: Podcasting and Accessibility

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From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Feb 2, 2006 3:00AM

> If we're talking purely about "portable audio devices", of
>> course there's no way to make them accessible (to deaf/hard of hearing
>> users).

I have a colleague, Stuart Lawler in the National Council For the Blind of Ireland,
who is blind and mad about all things related to audio.
He has been raving about a piece of software called Rockbox that he uses with the
Archos. It can also be used on iRiver devices.

I haven't had a chance to look at it but for anyone interested its at:

http://www.rockbox.org/

Josh

Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
> Karl Groves wrote:
>
>> I might be splitting hairs a little bit, but as I understand it,
>> "podcasts"
>> are intended to be viewed/ listened to on portable devices such as
>> i-pods.
>> In fact, the OP's post stated "we have growing interest in podcasting and
>> other "mobile learning" ventures. " - "mobile" being the operative word
>> leading to my question about SMIL support by portable audio devices.
>
>
> Hang on. If we're talking purely about "portable audio devices", of
> course there's no way to make them accessible (to deaf/hard of hearing
> users). Also, I'm not suggesting that SMIL should be used exclusively.
> The podcast can still remain an MP3 (and be encapsulated via RSS 2.0 or
> whatever), but for access reasons a text transcript and/or SMIL should
> be made available in parallel to it.
>
>> I think your recommendation of SMIL was an excellent one - IF - the OP
>> also
>> places those MP3 files on the web site.
>
>
> Which he'd have to do anyway, even if providing the podcast in an RSS
> 2.0 file...as that only references those external files, and they need
> to be hosted on a web server...
>