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Thread: RE: WebCam
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From: Paul Bohman
Date: Thu, Aug 29 2002 1:07PM
Subject: RE: WebCam
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Your question about captions for webcams brings up some interesting
points.
I was involved in discussions about this very topic during meetings of
the workgroup at the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) for version 2.0
of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. We didn't arrive at any
definitive conclusions that would fit every situation, but there are
some general rules of thumb that you could follow.
The key is to ask yourself what the purpose of your Webcam is. For
example, at Utah State University, there is a Webcam which shows the
campus grounds in front of one of the prominent buildings that we call
"Old Main." This Webcam, in principle, conveys a large amount of
information, but not all of it is relevant to the viewer.
So the first thing to decide is what your purpose is. In the Utah State
University example, my guess is that the purpose is to show the campus
grounds. I'm not the developer of that particular content, so I can't
say that for sure, but that's a pretty good guess. If that's the case,
then I would say that synchronous captions are not important. I would
simply provide a text description of the campus grounds right on the
page itself. I would describe the grass area, the "Old Main" building,
the mountains in the background, and so on.
Just for the sake of argument, let's look at a couple of other potential
purposes for a Webcam at Utah State University. Maybe the purpose of the
Webcam is to show the current weather. If this is the case, you could
probably argue that it would be sufficient to either have current
information about the weather right on the page itself, or provide a
link to a site that provides such information, e.g. weather.com.
You might argue that such a solution would not show the exact same
information about the weather that is available via the Webcam. In some
ways, this is a valid argument. For instance, on a partly cloudy day,
you could look at the Webcam and determine whether it was cloudy in that
particular instant. A person reading the weather information in text
would probably not get such up-to-the-minute information. The text could
say "partly cloudy" but it probably wouldn't be able to say "it is
cloudy right this very second."
Another, completely different scenario: If you have a Webcam pointed at
a stretch of freeway, with the purpose of the webcam being to show how
busy the traffic is, this is a situation where any text equivalents
would have to be updated very frequently. You wouldn't want to have a
static text description, you'd want it to be very dynamic. You'd
probably have to have a human being entering in the text description on
a continual basis, unless you've got the webcam hooked up to an
elaborate system that counts the number of cars as the pass or
something. But do you have to provide this as captioning? Would a text
transcript be sufficient? My personal opinion is that captioning is one
acceptable solution, but that text would work also. In fact, the only
way to make it accessible to screen readers would be to provide a text
version of the information anyway.
You could probably come up with some scenario where captioning would be
more appropriate than text alone, but these situations will be few.
MY CONCLUSION: Evaluate your purpose for the Webcam. Much of the time, a
text description will be sufficient. Sometimes you will need to have a
system that constantly updates the text to match the visual aspect of
the Webcam. Sometimes true captioning will be the best solution.
Sometimes it will be extremely labor intensive to provide a true,
accessible version of a Webcam when the text equivalent and/or captions
must be very current. There is not one solution that fits all scenarios.
Choose the most appropriate one.
And as for the Section 508 requirement and or WAI requirement is
concerned, sometimes you have to look beyond the guidelines just a bit.
The guidelines are there for a reason, but sometimes you just have to
say "my solution really is better." So if providing a text equivalent is
the best solution for your situation, don't go for "compliance", go for
accessibility.
Paul Bohman
Technology Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Center for Persons with Disabilities
www.cpd.usu.edu
Utah State University
www.usu.edu
From: John Foliot - bytown internet
Date: Fri, Aug 30 2002 5:13PM
Subject: don't go for "compliance", go for accessibility (was RE: WebCam)
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Better Late Than Never Dept.
Paul Bohman wrote:
> And as for the Section 508 requirement and or WAI requirement is
concerned,
> sometimes you have to look beyond the guidelines just a bit. The
guidelines
> are there for a reason, but sometimes you just have to say "my solution
really
> is better." So if providing a text equivalent is the best solution for
your
> situation, don't go for "compliance", go for accessibility.
Ah but that it were so simple.
Many developers within government organizations around the world don't have
that luxury... they must adhere to "Standards", no matter how vague or
difficult they may be. This is one of the major flaws in the current WCAG
Priority 1,2,3 checkpoints... they were written as guides, not standards.
Yet in many territories (Canada is certainly one of them), these Guidelines
have been given the weight (and legal responsibility) of Standards - "too
bad, so sad - deal with it". Canadian Federal developers must adhere to all
of the Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints for compliance, despite the fact that
they can be vague to confusing at the best of times.
In the US, they looked at checkpoints such as #7.1 "Until user agents allow
users to control flickering, avoid causing the screen to flicker" and
realized that this was just too vague... after all, what is "flicker"? The
dancing mailbox animated gif? DHTML "actions" which, using a poor or older
video card, could in fact cause a screen to "flicker"? So Section 508
addressed this point with a measurable value; "(j) Pages shall be designed
to avoid causing the screen to flicker with a frequency greater than 2 Hz
and lower than 55 Hz."
Granted, the problem in part is with government policy authors who took the
slacker's way out, and rather than attempting to grok the situation opted to
have the W3C lead the way. But the W3C is now in a position where the next
iteration of the WCAG needs to be precise and definitive... avoiding the
vagaries of the original, if for no other reason in that governments have
abdicated the responsibility to the W3C. While I'm guilty of not
contributing to the any of the discussions of the workgroup at the Web
Accessibility Initiative, I can only hope that they have discussed this
point and are looking to address it within the language of the next release.
I have quickly looked at the new draft and don't see any glaring issues, but
that's just been a quick glance...
Meanwhile, while I share Paul's sentiment and general perspective, I counsel
all to be very careful when opting to ignore the guidlelines, no matter what
the reason.
JF
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From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Tue, Sep 03 2002 3:44AM
Subject: RE: WebCam
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At 1:57 PM -0600 8/29/02, Paul Bohman wrote:
>And as for the Section 508 requirement and or WAI requirement is
>concerned, sometimes you have to look beyond the guidelines just a
>bit. The guidelines are there for a reason, but sometimes you just
>have to say "my solution really is better." So if providing a text
>equivalent is the best solution for your situation, don't go for
>"compliance", go for accessibility.
Amen, my friend, amen.
--Kynn
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Kynn Bartlett < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com
Next Book: Teach Yourself CSS in 24 http://cssin24hours.com
Kynn on Web Accessibility ->> http://kynn.com/+sitepoint
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