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Number of posts in this thread: 6 (In chronological order)

From: pony_smith
Date: Thu, Jul 08 2004 12:47PM
Subject: quicktime accessibility
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Hello,

I've got what probably amounts to a silly question, but I'm stumped. I've got a page with a quicktime .mov embedded in it. Testing the movie in IE works fine; I'm able to tab onto it and play/pause the movie with the enter key. When I try it in other browsers though (I've tried Netscape on PC and Mac as well as Safari) it is completely inaccessible via the keyboard. It's like the embedded object isn't receiving the tab focus.

Is there some code I'm missing in the quicktime embedding or is this just a cross-platform problem? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Pony Smith

P.S. here's the embedding code if that will help.

From: Jared Smith
Date: Thu, Jul 08 2004 1:12PM
Subject: Re: quicktime accessibility
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You are experiencing one of many discrepancies between how the media
player object interacts with different browsers. Your code is correct
- it's just that the browsers handle the media 'plugin' differently. I
typically recommend that media be opened in the stand-alone player
when possible, as the players tend to have a much broader array of
accessibility options than the embedded plugin. You can read a quick
review of stand-alone versus embedded players at
http://www.webaim.org/techniques/captions/mediaplayers/

Note that the Quicktime comparison does not indicate the missing
keyboard control that you have described.

If the stand-alone player is not an option, you might use scripting
with external buttons that could be used to control the media playback
using mouse or keyboard.

Jared Smith
WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind)
Center for Persons with Disabilities
Utah State University

From: pony_smith
Date: Thu, Jul 08 2004 1:37PM
Subject: Re: quicktime accessibility
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Jared,

Thanks for the help. I was afraid you'd say that. I'll look into switching to stand-alone.

Thanks again.

Pony Smith

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Thu, Jul 08 2004 3:00PM
Subject: Re: quicktime accessibility
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> You are experiencing one of many discrepancies between how the media
> player object interacts with different browsers. Your code is correct
> - it's just that the browsers handle the media 'plugin' differently. I
> typically recommend that media be opened in the stand-alone player
> when possible, as the players tend to have a much broader array of
> accessibility options than the embedded plugin. You can read a quick
> review of stand-alone versus embedded players at
> http://www.webaim.org/techniques/captions/mediaplayers/

I'll add that you might just want to add a link to the page to "view movie
in standalone player". Internet explorer users can hit the spacebar or
enter to pause/play the movie, but Mozilla/Opera users aren't able to set
the focus on the movie unless they click on it, in which case the movie can
then be paused/played from the keyboard (not an acceptable workaround!).

You might be able to set an accesskey on the movie, but then you have to
deal with accesskey issuss and communicating the correct key to the user. A
separate link to a standalone version is probably the best thing, as Jared
said.

AWK


--
Andrew Kirkpatrick
Project Manager, WGBH National Center for Accessible Media
125 Western Ave.
Boston, MA 02134

617-300-4420 (direct voice/FAX)
617-300-3400 (main NCAM)
617-300-2489 (TTY)

From: pony_smith
Date: Fri, Jul 09 2004 10:14AM
Subject: Re: quicktime accessibility
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Andrew,

What's the best (or most widely accpted) way to handle a text link to an external viewer. From what I understand, quicktime doesn't really support that type of functionality at this stage. The only way I've been able to find is a link to a .qtl file which then references the movie. Is that the way to go?

Thanks again.

Pony

From: pony_smith
Date: Fri, Jul 09 2004 2:08PM
Subject: Re: quicktime accessibility
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Sounds great.

Thank you both for all your help.

Pony