October 04, 2007

AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! Unite to Advance Online Media Captioning

In an effort to overcome technology and production barriers, the leading providers of Web-based video have joined with media access pioneer WGBH/Boston to develop solutions that will increase the amount of online video accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have asked WGBH and its Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) to establish and manage the Internet Captioning Forum (ICF). The ICF will initially address the technical challenges presented by online video repurposed from broadcast or other previously captioned sources, as well as video created specifically for the Web.

"More and more people are turning to the Internet to get their news, watch programs and other video," says WGBH's Director of Media Access, Larry Goldberg. "The scarcity of captions online is due to a variety of challenges, including a proliferation of media and text formats and players, editing of programs originally distributed with captions, and lack of clear online caption production and delivery requirements. The founding members of the ICF are all companies long dedicated to making their products and services accessible to people with disabilities. They recognize that working together on this challenge is the best, fastest and most practical way to get more captioned video on the Web."

The collaboration is expected to yield a range of solutions and tools, among them:

In addition to the global audience of people who are deaf or hard of hearing, beneficiaries of the ICF's initiative also include people who rely on translation engines to convert caption text into other languages, people using online video in noisy situations or at work, and search engines that use caption text to search and retrieve online videos.

Cheryl Heppner, executive director of the Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons says, "The formation of the Internet Captioning Forum will become a milestone in the history of access to media. The community of people who are deaf or hard of hearing has worked for decades to achieve the access to television captioning we have now. The partnership of AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! with WGBH promises to be a major step forward for accessible online video."

ICF partners share their thoughts on the collaboration:

"For several years now AOL has been working to tackle the range of challenges to facilitate timely delivery of captioned video content online: from the production and need for automated publishing of caption data to support for the display of captions in AOL's web-based media player. Our efforts have demonstrated that collaboration between content producers and content distributors is the best way forward to achieve wide scale availability of captioned video on the web. It is our hope that the Internet Caption Forum will provide the venue for producers and distributors to come together to define the model for production and delivery of captions on the Web."
- Tom Wlodkowski, Director of Accessibility, AOL

"The Internet has been one of the most democratizing forces in the communications universe but it needs to accommodate the needs of all its users, including those who have need of features such as captions for audio and adaptable visual presentations. The Forum is one way in which information service providers can work together to establish reliable practices to improve access to Internet-based information."
- Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

"As a leader in the online media space, we recognize our responsibility to raise the level of service we supply so that it is accessible to everyone. Microsoft is pleased to join with our industry colleagues and WGBH to create solutions that will enable the industry to effectively deliver online captioned media."
- Rob Sinclair, Director, Microsoft Accessibility Business Unit

"Yahoo! applauds the collaborative effort led by WGBH to create a solution for making online video content accessible to all. Because the need for online captioning will continue to grow across the Web, Yahoo! is excited to join with our colleagues to develop quality responses to this accessibility challenge. "
- Victor Tsaran, Accessibility Program Manager, Yahoo!

About NCAM/WGBH
The WGBH-Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) is a research, development and advocacy entity that works to make existing and emerging technologies accessible to all audiences. NCAM is part of the Media Access Group at WGBH, which also includes The Caption Center (est. 1972), and Descriptive Video Service® (est. 1990). For more information, visit access.wgbh.org.

WGBH Boston is America's preeminent public broadcasting producer, the source of fully one-third of PBS's prime-time lineup, along with some of public television's best-known lifestyle shows and children's programs and many public radio favorites. WGBH is also the leading producer of online content for pbs.org, one of the most-visited dot-org sites on the Web. For more information, visit www.wgbh.org.

Contacts:

WGBH: Mary Watkins, 617 300-3700, mary_watkins@wgbh.org


AOL: Jaymelina Esmele, 703 265-7831, jaymelina.esmele@corp.aol.com


Google: Gabriel Stricker, 650 930-3555, press@google.com


Microsoft: Ellen Kampel, 425 706-3055, ellenk@microsoft.com


Yahoo!: Julie Han, 408 349-7661, juliehan@yahoo-inc.com

Posted by Nancy at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2007

Accessible Web Courses and Web Conferences in March

EASI is providing 3 opportunities to expand your knowledge about accessibility in online courses, online Webinars and conferences. One is fee-based while 2 are free to anyone.

Barrier-free E-learning is EASI's fee-based, month-long course for march, (Part of the Certificate in Accessible Information Technology). Accessibility on the Web can be confusing and for non-technical types even overwhelming. However, EASI has help for information technology staff, instructional design staff disabled student support staff and faculty. Most of the Web accessibility standards relate primarily or exclusively to the provider of the courseware management system you will probably be using. Only a limited set of accessibility issues relate directly to most course content posted inside those systems. Even with these issues, most of them can be achieved with careful use of the authoring tools already being used by content providers.

This Barrier-free E-learning course will provide a borad understanding and background and then go in considerable detail on how to use common authoring tools like Microsoft Word to create accessible content.

Read the syllabus and register online at: http://easi.cc/workshops/bfel.htm
The first free event is a Webinar looking at what makes online conferencing systems accessible to people with disabilities and which features creat problems. EASI wants to demonstrate the new system it will be using, and we want people to come and share their views and experiences. With a topic this broad, we can't know everything! Join us at Tuesday, March 13 at 2 PM, but register early at: http://easi.cc/clinic.htm

Posted by Nancy at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2007

Proceedings Now Available for Web Accessibility CapacityBuilding Institute

Proceedings are now available for the Web Accessibility Capacity Building Institute (CBI), held November 29 - December 1, 2006 in Seattle. The CBI was funded by the National Science Foundation (cooperative agreement #0227995) through the Northwest Alliance for Access to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (AccessSTEM), which is directed at the University of Washington. The purpose of the CBI was to identify accessibility problems and solutions related to emerging web applications and the technologies used to create them, as well as to identify strategies that lead to systemic change within higher education.

The full proceedings, including a comprehensive summary of CBI presentations and discussions, is available online: http://www.washington.edu/doit/cbi/webaccess/proceedings.html

The ultimate goal of AccessSTEM is to increase the successful participation of people with disabilities in STEM careers. To reach this goal, it is critical that students with disabilities have full access to the software and information used in their educational programs. Higher education institutions are exploring and beginning to utilize rich media technologies to improve functionality and usability of both academic and administrative web services, but by doing so they may risk excluding students and employees with disabilities. It is critical that accessibility be addressed early in the development and deployment of web applications, including those that utilize emerging technologies such as AJAX, Adobe Flex, and Adobe Flash.

Participants at the CBI included representatives from the World Wide Consortium (W3C), IBM, Google, Yahoo, Adobe, and GW Micro, as well as 27 web managers and programmers from 11 colleges and universities, primarily from the Northwest region of the United States.

Posted by Nancy at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)