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RE: Accessible podcasts

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From: Joe Clark
Date: Mar 26, 2006 10:20AM

>NCAM recently did some testing of open-captioned videos for playback
>on an iPod and other handheld devices, like a PSP.

I smell a grant request in the offing.

>I was quite surprised at how legible the text was at a small size

It isn't "small" in any useful sense because captioning is to be
considered in comparison to the size of the image and the viewer's
vision. If you decode Line 21 captions and shove the whole thing onto
an iPod, they'll be the same *proportional* size as on TV, give or
take a scanline. Other kinds of open captioning would have similar
effects. You certainly might want to make them a wee bit larger, but
not by a lot.

We demonstrated this at CBC circa 2002 when we ran a project to
decode Line 21 captions for online viewing. We provided a captioned
and an uncaptioned file for many news items. The caption fonts were
as ugly as ever but were not really any less readable. And though the
CBC pulled the plug on the project (true to form, without telling
me), the videos are still online.

<http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&;hl=en&q=captioned+site%3Awww.cbc.ca%2Fstories%2F2002%2F>

<http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&;hl=en&q=captioned+site%3Awww.cbc.ca%2Fstories%2F2003%2F>

<http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&;hl=en&q=captioned+site%3Awww.cbc.ca%2Fstories%2F2004%2F>

You can verify it yourself in other ways, as by watching DVDs with
captions (or subtitles, as the effect is the same) on a laptop at a
fair distance from your eyes, as on a plane ride. Size measurement is
relative, not absolute.

--

Joe Clark | <EMAIL REMOVED>
Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>;
Expect criticism if you top-post