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Thread: Academic Library Bucks Web Accessibility
Number of posts in this thread: 6 (In chronological order)
From: ilana kingsley
Date: Thu, Nov 06 2003 11:52AM
Subject: Academic Library Bucks Web Accessibility
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Greetings,
I've recently started a new job as a Web librarian in
a small-mid-size university. I've been trying to
implement web-accessibility policies for the library,
however, a few department heads feel that this is too
costly. All I want to do is make sure that any content
the library produces meets W3C Priority 1 guidelines.
This implementation is for any *new* content and is
not intended for existing content. The problem is, a
specific department produces a lot of audio/video and
they are claiming that they do not have enough
resources or money to make things accessible. They
rationalize that producing some content accessible by
some people is better than not producing any content
at all-- it's better that we have something. Then they
start saying how all of our electronic journal
subscriptions don't meet accessibility guidelines
(most full text journals are in pdf format) and they
start telling me about all the other non-accessible
things in the library.
All I want to do is create a simple policy insuring
that new content is accessible!! They don't seem to
care that they are legally obligated to do this.
Any suggestions on how to deal with this?
Thanks,
I. Newby
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From: Rachel Tanenhaus
Date: Thu, Nov 06 2003 11:59AM
Subject: RE: Academic Library Bucks Web Accessibility
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Hello!
Are they familiar with MAGpie, produced by NCAM? This can help them
provide captioning and description for their A/V products, and they
certainly can't complain about the cost. ;)
http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/ for more information.
-Rachel
Rachel H. Tanenhaus, MPH
Information Specialist
New England ADA & Accessible IT Center
374 Congress Street, Suite 301
Boston, MA 02210
Phone: (617) 695-0085 (v/tty)
or (800) 949-4232 (v/tty) (in New England)
Fax: (617) 482-8099
E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
URL: www.NewEnglandADA.org
From: ilana kingsley
Date: Thu, Nov 06 2003 12:10PM
Subject: RE: Academic Library Bucks Web Accessibility
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Hi Rachel,
I've been using MAGpie and will show a demo of it
tomorrow. They still the cost outweighs the benefits.
They are concerned with the cost of transcribing the
audio and/or video. Then they are concerned about the
amount of time it will take to do the captioning.
Thanks.
--- Rachel Tanenhaus
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Are they familiar with MAGpie, produced by NCAM?
> This can help them
> provide captioning and description for their A/V
> products, and they
> certainly can't complain about the cost. ;)
>
> http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/ for more
> information.
>
> -Rachel
>
> Rachel H. Tanenhaus, MPH
> Information Specialist
> New England ADA & Accessible IT Center
> 374 Congress Street, Suite 301
> Boston, MA 02210
> Phone: (617) 695-0085 (v/tty)
> or (800) 949-4232 (v/tty) (in New England)
> Fax: (617) 482-8099
> E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> URL: www.NewEnglandADA.org
>
>
From: Cheryl Kirkpatrick
Date: Thu, Nov 06 2003 1:11PM
Subject: Re: Academic Library Bucks Web Accessibility
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ilana kingsley wrote:
> Greetings,
> I've recently started a new job as a Web librarian in
> a small-mid-size university. I've been trying to
> implement web-accessibility policies for the library,
> however, a few department heads feel that this is too
> costly. *snip*
>
> Any suggestions on how to deal with this?
Ilana,
I have been working within South Carolina government and libraries on
accessibility. I too continuously hear the refrain,
From: Michael D. Roush
Date: Thu, Nov 06 2003 1:24PM
Subject: Re: Academic Library Bucks Web Accessibility
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----- Original Message -----
From: "ilana kingsley" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> Greetings,
> I've recently started a new job as a Web librarian in
> a small-mid-size university. I've been trying to
> implement web-accessibility policies for the library,
> however, a few department heads feel that this is too
> costly. All I want to do is make sure that any content
> the library produces meets W3C Priority 1 guidelines.
First of all, "Excelsior and Huzzah!" to you for your stance! I hope that
this list and other resources will be able to assist you in your worthy
effort.
As far as the 'expense' objection, I won't sugar-coat this.... captioning
can be expensive. Even using a wonderful tool like MAGPie, it can be very
time-consuming. But, producing quality digital video and audio is expensive
too. And if they are doing more than just slapping a quick recording of a
lecture or something online, they are already going to considerable expense.
If not, the video and audio they are producing probably isn't worth the
ones-and-zeros that it uses!
Also, I would be very surprised if somewhere, even in a small-to-mid-size
university, there isn't a student assistant or four who can do captioning
and/or transcription work that would not cost the university a fortune, and
probably could be managed under work-study assignments.
My first thought was "Don't these professors want this content to be
available to deaf students?" But, that's probably a silly question. Of
course they do. My guess is that their fear is that they will *lose* their
video/audio archives (which they are likely very proud of) if someone
squawks too loudly about their inaccessibility. I think it should be very
clear that a deaf student who cannot take advantage of such a benefit simply
because she is deaf constitutes 'discrimination' under the ADA, and should
concern the university.
However, I would also agree that spending a fortune for captioning is an
unreasonable burden. Give them concrete numbers. "Transcribing one hour of
video should take x hours using y equipment for a total cost of z dollars
added to a project that already costs us blah-blah-blah".
Making a site accessible from the beginning is a whole lot less expensive
than going back and 'retro-fitting' it to make it accessible later. Just
ask the people who managed the website for the Sydney Olympics.
The fear of the expense should be met with honest numbers on the current
cost, and cost of doing it right. The 'moral' argument of it being the
right thing to do is probably a losing argument with them. They know it's
the right thing to do, but something else is holding them back. Probably
that fear I mentioned before. So, if you can cut through that one, both
sides will have what they want.
I'm sure members of this list will be happy to help in any way possible,
especially any who might happen to be in your region.
Michael Roush
AccessRamp.org
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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Thu, Nov 06 2003 1:53PM
Subject: Re: Academic Library Bucks Web Accessibility
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There is no doubt that there are costs associated with captioning, even if
the tool is free.
Time estimation tips for a fifteen minute clip (these are minimum values):
1) Transcription time: 1 hr
2) Caption preparation time: .5 hr
3) Caption timing time: .25 hr
4) Review time: .5 hr
5) Integrate into Web page .25 hr
Total: 2.5 hours for 15 minutes.
So for an hour clip, you are looking at approximately 9.25 hours of work
captioning it.
Possible savings:
1) Using speech recognition software to help with transcription. Some
people report that they get decent results by "echoing" the content. The
software is trained for the person doing the echoing.
2) The transcript should be broken into captions before importing into the
captioning tool. You can do some of this easily (replace end-sentence
punctuation with a double-line break) but you'll then need to break then
sentences into (we recommend) two line captions.
3) Caption timing - this is in theory an amount of time equal to the length
of the video. To do this you need to be very good or be ready to spend more
time editing later.
4) Review time. Much like a paper written for a class, reviewing it at the
time when you are sick of it improves the quality immeasurably. Some
people undoubtedly skip this step to save time. Don't - there will be
errors. Our caption center uses a 2:1 ratio (review time to video length).
Novice captioners require more time.
Consider your options carefully. Captioning is expensive and quality does
make a difference. If you shop around you'll probably find people willing
to caption an hour of video for a couple hundred dollars, which would be
very cheap and you might want to define quality standards carefully before
committing to a large contract.
AWK
On 11/6/03 2:05 PM, "ilana kingsley" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hi Rachel,
>
> I've been using MAGpie and will show a demo of it
> tomorrow. They still the cost outweighs the benefits.
> They are concerned with the cost of transcribing the
> audio and/or video. Then they are concerned about the
> amount of time it will take to do the captioning.
>
> Thanks.
>
> --- Rachel Tanenhaus
> < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>> Hello!
>>
>> Are they familiar with MAGpie, produced by NCAM?
>> This can help them
>> provide captioning and description for their A/V
>> products, and they
>> certainly can't complain about the cost. ;)
>>
>> http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/ for more
>> information.
>>
>> -Rachel
>>
>> Rachel H. Tanenhaus, MPH
>> Information Specialist
>> New England ADA & Accessible IT Center
>> 374 Congress Street, Suite 301
>> Boston, MA 02210
>> Phone: (617) 695-0085 (v/tty)
>> or (800) 949-4232 (v/tty) (in New England)
>> Fax: (617) 482-8099
>> E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>> URL: www.NewEnglandADA.org
>>
>>