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MAUR Comment Processing 2

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MAUR Comment Processing 2

This is a page where we are going to capture all the comments on the 14 August 2014 draft of the MAUR.

Comment 1 from Andrew Normand

Andrew submitted:

2.5 Hard of hearing

Add the following: People with cochlear implants don't have to worry about damaging their hearing because it is all artificial, but they do need to avoid media experiences that overwhelm the brain.

The task force agrees that this should be addressed. In order to make the prose more consistent with the rest of the section, we have added "People with cochlear implants may not have issues with audio volume levels, but comprehension may be challenging if the media experience is overwhelming."


Comment 2 from Andrew Normand

Andrew submitted:

2.8 Cognitive and neurological disabilities

Add the following: People with diseases of the central nervous system, such as MS, may lack the motor skills to click accurately on small objects or objects that are positioned too closely together.


I would also like to suggest the addition of the following requirements to the Media Accessibility Checklist: (a) that media player controls are of a sufficent size to make them clickable by users with neurological disabilities and physical impairments (UX : must) (b) that media player controls have sufficient spacing to prevent input errors by users with neurological disabilities and physical impairments (UX : should) (c) that media players indicate the length of the media and the elapsed time (UX : should) (d) that media player controls allow the user to control the volume (UX : WCAG 1.4.2 : must)


The task force discussed this comment, but in the end decided that the points were already addressed. In particular, section 2.7 covers people with physical limitations - it is not really important that the physical limitations are a result of MS. The associated requirements are the same regardless.

As to the additional checklist items, the task force felt they were already covered by requirements such as IC-2 and IC-3.

Comment 3 from Bronwyn Lapham

Bronwyn wrote:

[DV-13] "Allow the user to relocate the description track within the audio field, with the user setting 
overriding the author setting. The setting should be re-adjustable as the media plays."

If temporal relocation is the intended meaning, that will give rise to audio out of sync with the video; is that the intention? If spatial relocation is intended, isn't that covered in DV-6?

The task force realizes that the original text could be misinterpreted. The requirement is really about adjusting the location of the description track within audio space by "panning". We have added text to clarify this.


Comments 4 through 10 from the EOWG

clarify "not comprehensive"

The EOWG said:

Consider changing the section title from "Accessible Media Requirements by Type of Disability" to "Overview of Accessible Media
Requirements by Type of Disability" or "Summary of Accessible Media Requirements by Type of Disability" or "Examples of Accessible
Media Requirements by Type of Disability" or such.
Also, make clear in the first sentence that this section provides examples and is not comprehensive.


We have changed the heading. However, we disagree that the section is not comprehensive. We have done significant work to ensure that it is as comprehensive as it can possibly be, including soliciting input from many many external groups over a period of years.

deaf first

The EOWG said:

Put Deafness and Hard of hearing first (before Blindness).
rationale: More people are aware of blindness related to accessibility. With multimedia, deafness may be a much more
significant issue, and one that is thought of less.


The group disagrees with this comment. With the ubiquity of closed captioning, the group believes that awareness of deafness as an issue that relates to media is well socialized. The ways in which people who are blind or have limited sight can be assisted is not.

Atypical color perception

The EOWG said:

Reconsider "a significant percentage". Consider adding: (often called "color blindness"). Consider including a more clear
example(s) related to media requirements, such as colors in media controls or text overlays.


The group has made this change.

Cognitive and neurological disabilities

The EOWG said:

Consider cutting out the long list of conditions in the first sentence and tightening up the examples of accessibility
requirements for media to meet the needs of people with cognitive and neurological disabilities. [EOWG had some concerns
with the list, yet also the thought that some readers might recognize some conditions in the list but would not think of
them with just "cognitive and neurological disabilities".] Consider consulting the Cognitive Accessibility Task Force for
suggestions for this paragraph (and encouraging them to keep it fairly succinct like the others).
Rationale: This is a challenging area and the terminology and implications of it are complex. Probably it is best to just
avoid those issues in this section.


The group got input from the cognitive task force and made changes as they recommended. Thanks for the suggestion!

link to How People with Disabilities Use the Web resource

The EOWG said:

Add something like:
For a more in-depth exploration of how people with different disabilities interact with web content and tools, How People
with Disabilities Use the Web.


A link and appropriate text is included.

copyedit & disability wording review

The EOWG said:

Edit for more succinct language. Consider using the wording from http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/people-use-web/diversity
where appropriate.  They also provided a number of examples.


We are making some edits where they would not overtly effect the meaning. Thanks for pointing out that the wording was challenging.

categories

The EOWG said:

WAI has been using the following categorization: auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech, or visual
disabilities. While we like the breakdown of the categories in this document, please consider adding a higher
level to the subheads so that they more clearly align with How People with Disabilities Use the Web and other
WAI material - 
either
2.1 Auditory: Deafness
2.2 Auditory: Hard of Hearing
or
2.1. Auditory 
2.1.1. Deafness
2.1.2.Hard of hearing


We made changes as suggested. Thanks!


Comments 11 through 14 - input from the Cognitive Task Force

There were two emails with 4 total comments from the cognitive task force:

Sentence beginning with “Cognitive and …”

a. Cognitive disabilities are neurological disabilities.
 
·  Suggestion: Change “Cognitive and neurological disabilities …” to “Cognitive disabilities …”.

The group made this change

b. All of the references are to cause/disability disorders except for “memory impairments”.

·  Suggestion: Remove “memory impairments” from the list. It is common to all of the disorders listed anyway.

The group disagreed with this change. While the assertion may be correct, one of the general issues that faces all of us as we age is general memory impairment.

Sentence beginning with “Individuals with …”

a. It is not just that “…information that is presented as text embedded in a video should also be available
as audio descriptions …”. Text anywhere, such as in web pages, should be available aurally.

The group disagrees with this change. There are guidelines for what should be presented aurally that are part of WCAG. Moreover, this document is about media and media controls, not all the content that is on a web page.

b. Suggestion: Change to “… information presented as text should be available aurally, including audio
descriptions embedded in videos …”.

The group made a change related to this comment.

Sentence beginning with “Some conditions …”

a. The reference to “…multi-system effects …” is confusing to me. I don’t know what that means.

·  Suggestion: Reword/clarify.

It turns out that this is a term of art that relates to ASD specifically. However, the group tried to clean up the text to improve readability.


b. This is a run-on sentence.

·  Suggestion: Divide into two sentences, i.e. “Some conditions, such as autism-spectrum disorders, may
have multi-system effects. Individuals may need a combination of different accommodation.”

The group made a change related to this.

c. I believe the reference to “accommodation” should be plural.

· Suggestion: Change to “accommodations”.

The group made a change related to this.

Bad wording in a sentence

"Necessary accessibility supports vary widely for these different conditions"

doesn't read well to me. - suggest rewording to be less passive..


The group made a change related to this comment. Thanks!


Comments 15 through 24 from Nigel Megitt

Nigel Megitt submitted a number of comments:

Comment 16 on CC-10

The commentor said:

Render a background in a range of colors, supporting a full range of opacity levels.
Comment: It enhances readability if the bounding box of the background area is not tightly aligned with the text edges, i.e. that some background space is visible especially at each end of a line area, for example the equivalent of the width of half a space in the selected font.
Proposal: Add a new requirement:-
"Enable the bounding box of the background area to be extended by a preset distance relative to the foreground text contained within that background area."

The task force agreed with this proposal, and added text to this effect as CC-28.

Comment 17 on CC-11

[CC-11] Render text in a range of colors.
NOTE
The user should have final control over rendering styles like color and fonts; e.g., through user preferences.
Comment: A default palette of colours suitable for colour blind users should be available to distinguish editorial concepts, such as speakers. There are likely to be conflicting requirements between different users with differing cognitive conditions to maximise the accessibility of content, so full colour customisation should be available. For example users with cognitive conditions such as dyslexia (itself an umbrella label for a variety of conditions), ADHD and Asperger's may find that viewing content that is given a particular colour cast, akin to viewing through blue spectacles, say, helps them to read presented text. Whilst further research is needed in this area, we should recommend that full colour customisation is available.

The task force agrees with this comment, and added text to this effect into the requirement.

Comment 18 on CC-12

[CC-12] Enable rendering of text with a thicker outline or a drop shadow to allow for better contrast with the background.
Comment: It's correct that this should be enabled however it should not be presented as a suitable general alternative to displaying text on a non-transparent background, from a legibility perspective. For example, white text with drop shadows on a transparent background is not readable over a white video, such as footage of snow.
Comment: The use of drop shadows increases the sense of 'busyness' that can have negative impacts for viewers with some cognitive conditions. In general it is preferable not to use drop shadows for the purpose of improving text legibility.

The task force agrees with the comment, and added notes to cover the comments above.

Comment 19 on CC-13

[CC-13] Where a background is used, it is preferable to keep the caption background visible even in times where no text is displayed, such that it minimizes distraction. However, where captions are infrequent the background should be allowed to disappear to enable the user to see as much of the underlying video as possible.
Comment: this is a cultural/editorial feature that is not accepted globally and is likely to result in unnecessarily obscured video.
Proposal 1: Remove this requirement.
Proposal 2 (in case Proposal 1 is rejected): Change 'it is preferable' to 'it should be possible'.

The task force agreed with proposal 2 and made changes to this effect.

Comment 20 on CC-14

[CC-14] Allow the use of mixed display styles‹ e.g., mixing paint-on captions with pop-on captions‹ within a single caption cue or in the caption stream as a whole. Pop-on captions are usually one or two lines of captions that appear on screen and remain visible for one to several seconds before they disappear. Paint-on captions are individual characters that are "painted on" from left to right, not popped onto the screen all at once, and usually are verbatim. Another often-used caption style in live captioning is roll-up - here, cue text follows double chevrons ("greater than" symbols), and are used to indicate different speaker identifications. Each sentence "rolls up" to about three lines. The top line of the three disappears as a new bottom line is added, allowing the continuous rolling up of new lines of captions.


Proposal: Add a Note to this section:
"The comprehension and appreciation of captions and subtitles depends on how well matched they are to the related video content, editorially. In particular the pacing of the content should be reflected in the caption text; for example a fast paced drama or is likely to benefit from relatively short captions that change more often in comparison to a slow paced one. In extremis very fast changing short subtitles do cause readability problems because they can prevent viewers from having enough attention to consider the video; such extremes should be avoided."
Proposal: Add a Note to this section:
"When displaying captions in the paint-on style care should be taken to ensure that the final words that are displayed are visible for enough time that they can be read."

The task force agreed with the sentiment of these proposals, but added text to both the requirement and the notes to make it stronger.

Comment 21 on CC-15

[CC-15] Support positioning such that the lowest line of captions appears at least 1/12 of the total screen height above the bottom of the screen, when rendered as text in a right-to-left or left-to-right language.


Comment: this rule is not global and, in the measurement of 1/12 appears to be arbitrary. We agree that a gap does help readability, but propose that the specific distance requirement should be removed.

The task force agreed with this change and included appropriate text.

Comment 22 requesting a new CC Requirement 1

Comment: The legibility of rendered text depends on the size of the text as perceived by the viewer, which is in turn dependent on the display size and the distance between display and viewer. I propose adding:
Proposal: Add a new requirement:- "Enable responsive choice of text size based on display size and expected distance between display and viewer."

The task force agreed with the sentiment of this change, but felt that it is already covered by CC-9 and CC-11 and a new requirement was not needed.

Comment 23 requesting a new CC Requirement 2

Comment: To maximise readability of text it is often beneficial to use a font that is optimised for the technology used within the platform and display. For example the approach to handling multiple screen sizes in Android means that unmodified general purpose fonts such as Helvetica do not always render well - in that case the Roboto font may be preferable.
Proposal: Add a new requirement:- "Enable fonts optimised for readability on the display in use to be preferred where they are available."

The task force agrees with this, and added text in CC-11 to cover the cases of responsive rendering based upon target environment.

Comment 24 on VP-5

[VP-5] Captions and subtitles traditionally occupy the lower third of the video, where controls are also usually rendered. The user agent must avoid overlapping of overlay content and controls on media resources. This must also happen if, for example, the controls are only visible on demand.
NOTE
If there are several types of overlapping overlays, the controls should stay on the bottom edge of the viewport and the others should be moved above this area, all stacked above each other.


Comment: It is also important to avoid captions and subtitles overlapping editorially important content areas such as mouths, burned in text etc.
Comment: We strongly disagree with the stacking approach described in the Note. In many cases the best location for the captions/subtitles in this scenario is towards the top of the viewport, where it is less likely to obscure mouths etc.
Proposal: Remove or edit the note to reflect these comments, for example resulting in:
"If there are several types of overlapping overlays, they should be positioned as far as possible to avoid obscuring editorially important parts of the underlying video such as burned in text, mouths etc. Users typically expect controls to appear at the bottom of the viewport. Controls should not be prevented from becoming usable due to repositioning."

The task force agreed that the original text was too prescriptive. The requirement and note were changed to make it clear that the implementation must do its best to avoid covering editorially important content.

Comments 25 through 29 from Josh Miele

Comment 25 on Introduction

Josh asked:

3.1 intro should not reference any of the stylistic preferences or guidelines for description (e.g., voicing, objectivity, timing), but should reference existing guidelines such as the DCMP description key.
There is a list of different description approaches in the intro. What are the items in this list. Should it be a definition list?
In addition to talking about monolithic description tracks, please talk about atomic description where individual description clips are synced with video.

The group agreed that the introduction should be cleaned up and made some changes to address this comment.

Comment 26 on DV4

Josh noticed this about DV4:

What about DV4. Does it really have to be real human speech? What about clips vs track?

The group changed the term to be "high quality speech".

Comment 27 on DV5 and DV6

Josh was concerned about the scope of DV5 and DV6:

If DV5 and DV6 regarding independent volume controls for program and descriptive audio are requirements, then Open Description does not comply

The group notes there are additional, similar requirements for audio volume in CA-3. We further note that separate volume adjustment is not always possible. However, where it is possible, it is a user requirement to be able to independently adjust these volumes, as well as to independently direct the audio to different playback devices.

Comment 28 on DV12

Josh was concerned that DV12 was inconsistent.

DV12 seems funny. Why address this specific buggy behavior? It seems like there are lots of undesirable behaviors we could call out, but this should not be a list of possible programming errors.

The group agreed and removed requirement DV-12. Subsequent requirements were renumbered.

Comment 29 on multiple, simultaneous description tracks

Josh wanted to know about simultaneous tracks:

What about multiple, simultaneous description tracks, such as might be desirable for different tracks voicing different information types, or for subtitled films where different voices would read different characters, and describer of visual elements; might want these voices in separate locations.

The group agreed that this should be clear, and added a new DV-12 to clarify that we are talking about all tracks. Also modified DV-2 to clarify that timing should be from the primary media resource.