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Re: Accessible podcasts

for

From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Mar 22, 2006 12:00PM

On 3/22/06, John E. Brandt < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Oh, and as to my definition...thank you for the reference. Very
> enlightening. However, if you read on in the wikipedia definition I found
> this statement:
>
> "The editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary declared "podcasting"
> the
> 2005 word of the year, defining the term as "a digital recording of a
> radio
> broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for
> downloading
> to a personal audio player".[2]"


Which means the New Oxford American Dictionary got it wrong.

And as that reference also points out, the term has evolved much over its
> short life span and continues. Heck, it might mean something different
> tomorrow.


Okay, go ask podcasters what podcasting means.

They'll tell you it doesn't mean "for an personal audio player."

I mean, really. Go ask a podcaster. They'll tell you that many people can
and do listen to the podcasts on Real Computers, and they're by no means
exclusive to either video or to iPod-style devices.

Meanwhile, as far as captions go -- if we're talking about people with
disabilities (and yes, I know some of you would like to ignore them for
purposes of accessibility), the people who benefit most from accessible,
captioned content are deaf and hard of hearing users.

The percentage of those people who actually own MP3 players is small. The
percentage of those people who use computers is quite high. I think it's
fair to assume that when we're talking about podcast accessibility, we're
not talking about a deaf user hunched over a 2 inch screen trying to make
out tiny captions.

In general, we're talking about the same techniques for making audio and
video accessible that we've always known and used: transcripts and
synchronized text streams.

--Kynn