Online Video Captions

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL have announced their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Inter­net Cap­tion­ing Forum (ICF) estab­lished to pro­mote the use of cap­tion­ing for online video. They will be work­ing with the National Cen­ter for Acces­si­ble Media (NCAM) at WGBH Boston. You can read quotes from Vint Cerf and other rep­re­sen­ta­tives from each of the big four at the National Cen­ter for Tech­nol­ogy Inno­va­tion regard­ing the effort.

I am nei­ther deaf or hard or hear­ing, but the cap­tions are almost always on when the tele­vi­sion is on in our home. I enjoy the view­ing expe­ri­ence and miss fewer words mum­bled here and there when I can look down and glance at the words when needed.

Google video cur­rently pro­vides detailed instruc­tions on adding cap­tion­ing to videos. Addi­tion­ally, in the Google Video Help Cen­ter, this ques­tions is asked, “Do you gen­er­ate captions/subtitles for my video?” and the answer they pro­vide is a promis­ing “Not at this time.” They also have a sec­tion where you can view exam­ples of cap­tioned videos.

NCAM Press Release

(hat tip: The Assis­tive Tech­nol­ogy Blog)

Accessible Multimedia — Skills for Access

Skills for Access bills itself as The Com­pre­hen­sive Guide to Cre­at­ing Acces­si­ble Mul­ti­me­dia for e-learning. I haven’t had time to go all the way through the site, but it looks like it deliv­ers with a lot of sub­stan­tive con­tent, com­plete with great case stud­ies as well as in-depth instruc­tions on how to cre­ate acces­si­ble mul­ti­me­dia using a vari­ety of tech­nolo­gies. (via splin­tered)

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