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Bug 8187 - Section 4.8.7 on video makes no reference to audio description
Summary: Section 4.8.7 on video makes no reference to audio description
Status: VERIFIED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: LC
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: a11y, a11ytf, media, NE
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-11-04 19:00 UTC by Kelly Ford
Modified: 2011-03-08 12:09 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Kelly Ford 2009-11-04 19:00:46 UTC
Section 4.8.7 on the video element makes a couple references to accessibility.  However neither of these references talk at all about audio description, a key component of making video contnet accessible to people who are blind.  Specific references where audio description should be referenced include:

In particular, this content is not intended to address accessibility concerns. To make video content accessible to the blind, deaf, and those with other
physical or cognitive disabilities, authors are expected to provide alternative media streams and/or to embed accessibility aids (such as caption or subtitle
tracks) into their media streams.

User agents should provide controls to enable or disable the display of closed captions associated with the video stream, though such features should, again,
not interfere with the page's normal rendering.
Comment 1 Silvia Pfeiffer 2009-12-16 12:42:14 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> User agents should provide controls to enable or disable the display of closed
> captions associated with the video stream, though such features should, again,
> not interfere with the page's normal rendering.
> 

A draft suggestion to include audio descriptions that were created textually and make them be read out by the screenreader has been implemented in javascript at http://www.annodex.net/~silvia/itext/elephant_no_skin_v2.html . This is in sync with the way in which we can solve captions and subtitles. The specification proposal for this is at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility/HTML5_captions_v2.
Comment 2 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-01-05 00:26:22 UTC
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Accepted
Change Description: see diff given below
Rationale: I've added mentions of audio descriptions to the two places listed, though frankly I'm a little wary of going down this road. There are almost an unlimited number of ways that media content can be made more accessible, and I don't think that mentioning every one each time is necessary to get the point across.
Comment 3 contributor 2010-01-05 00:27:20 UTC
Checked in as WHATWG revision r4460.
Check-in comment: Mention audio descriptions explicitly.
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=4459&to=4460
Comment 4 Michael Cooper 2010-02-04 16:38:09 UTC
HTML Accessibility Task force has decided not to track this.
Comment 5 Michael Cooper 2010-02-11 17:18:02 UTC
The HTML Accessibility Task Force intends to track these issues, per the proposal at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/2010Jan/0245.html.
Comment 6 Martin Kliehm 2011-03-08 12:09:28 UTC
Section 4.8.6 on video now mentions audio description tracks.