Notes taken by Gregory Rosmaita
Q: what do you think about MPEG7 work? seem to be
claiming that they've addressed all of the issues you
outlined
A: my understanding is that it is metadata, and in my
opinion doesn't address these issues
Q: if set top TVs are so dumb, what hope is there for
accessibility; can they be adapted to be more clever
A: today, settop boxes are fairly dumb animals and
speech rendering of text is beyond their capabilities,
but there are much more powerful ones coming in the
future
Q: access to program guides usually either on-screen
or LCD--could that info be routed to an accessible
channel; my concern is that when start accessing the
internet via the "laid back" browsing method, it
becomes even more important for multimodal output
A: EPG data is a big sticky point; HTML content
provided by system; for accessibility have to go to
manufacturers of devices, not standards setting orgs;
TV access different usage patterns than web
browsing on PC; convergence coming, so I would
very much encourage you to attend our meetings;
thinking of it in a very graphical/visual orientation;
have to argue strong and hard to get anything through
Q: broadcasters want what Open eBook wants--look
and feel more important than information content
Q: many European broadcasters are state-financed
and they might be forced to provide for accessibility in
the future
A: US example--closed captioning is a "must carry";
not aware of any pending legislation in that area
Claus: when you say there will be a smarter set, there
are interactive parts of it, but there is mostly push
technology--will we have to deal with settop
browsers?
A: users beginning to think of settop box as terminals,
TVs will get smarter; the time to address these issues
is now, because they are going to be important in the
future