My name is Janet Peters. I''m a Project Coordinator with the DBTAC Great Lakes ADA Center. The Accessible Technology Webinar Series is sponsored by the Great Lakes ADA Center and the Pacific ADA Center, both are members of the ADA National Network. I have a couple of housekeeping items before we begin. This session is being recorded and will be archived and available to you after it is posted. It will be on the adaaudio.org site. You will receive an e-mail with that link and the archive as soon as it''s available. At any point in this presentation, you may submit your questions to the presenter using the chat area, and there will be specific time set aside at the end for the speaker to answer any remaining questions you might have. The session is being captioned and there''s realtime captioning available. The CC symbol is on the lower right-hand corner of your viewing area. That icon, if you click on it, will open a dialog box where the captioning can be viewed and that dialog box has some options for your viewing. You can resize it and change the font. The handouts for today''s session are posted and available on the ADA audio website. This is the website where you registered as well as in that e-mail reminder that you received. So with the housekeeping items done, let''s turn it over to today''s session. Today''s session is Creating Accessible Video on the Internet. Our speaker, which we are very glad to have her with us, once again, is Marsha Schwanke. Marsha is a Web Developer and has over eight years experience designing, programming, testing, and managing content-rich database-driven web applications. These web applications maximize accessibility and usability based on best practices, research and established guidelines, such as those put out by the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Section 508. She is currently responsible for the development, content management, and support of five web courses and web projects with the DBTAC Southeast ADA Center which is a project of the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University. She has a Masters degree in Information Technology, and she is a Certified Therapeutic Recreational Specialist with over 20 years experience as a manager and practitioner working with children and adults with disabilities. Since 1995, she has authored and facilitated numerous trainings on disability awareness and web accessibility and assistive technology. She is an excellent speaker and we''re glad to have her with us today, and, with that, I''ll turn it over to you, Marsha.
Thank you very much Janet, and thank you all for joining us today for the presentation, Creating Accessible Video for the Internet. Janet Peters: Okay. It looks like we''re having a little bit of technical difficulty with our speaker; so let''s just give her a minute to rejoin us and make sure that she has access to the PowerPoint. Let''s -- is everyone able to hear me, or? Okay. So I''m going to turn it back over to Marsha. And Marsha, let''s see if you''re able to access the PowerPoint at this time. Sorry about the technical difficulty. We''ll get the presentation started immediately. Marsha Schwanke: Yes. I apologize for the technical difficulties. I will begin in just a moment. I''m bringing up the presentation.
While she''s getting the PowerPoint reloaded -- apparently there was an issue with advancing the slides. I am going to ask participants not to use their microphone because we have 67 or more participants. I will mute the users but, please, try not to do your microphone. Thank you.
Thank you all very much. I apologize for that technical difficulty. Let''s get underway. In this session -- and just to confirm, can everybody still hear me correctly? Okay. Thank you very much. In this session we''re going to cover why accessible video, the features of accessible video, tools for accessible video, tips to plan and develop accessible video, some examples and best practices, various resources. And, as Janet previously mentioned, at the end, we''ll provide time for questions and answers. There''s been a real demand for video explosion. Eighty-two percent of Internet users view videos online. 182 videos is the number that the average user views in one month. When there''s a video on the website, it holds people''s attention 10 times longer. One of the real big -- biggies -- this just happened in May of this year is that video served by YouTube in one day is over 2 billion. Also, once people have YouTube videos embedded, like on their blogs or on their websites, that''s 82 percent. They estimate that the Internet content will be video-based, by 2012, will be 90 percent of the Internet content. Why accessible video? You really want to do accessible video to maximize use by everyone; universal design. It''s not only for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing but also promotes language and literacy, communication for those who speak foreign languages or who are learning foreign languages as well as it promotes flexibility to different environments, whether it''s a noisy environment, like a bar; a quiet environment, like a library; or even a shared environment, like office cubicles. Accessible video also promotes for multiple modes of learning if someone is a visual or an auditory learner or even if they have any type of cognitive disability. In addition, by providing accessible video, you''re also promoting compatibility and access across technology, which is always rapidly, constantly changing. Another really good benefit of having accessible video is being able to have searchable content, particularly because of having that transcript, which is text. It''s also just the right thing to do. It''s just good business. We all have to keep in mind that all of us are temporarily able-bodied that any of us can experience a disability, either temporary or permanent at any time. And all of us are hopefully getting older and the likelihood of disability, of course, increases with the grain of our life span. One other thing too about accessible video is it has to do with compliance. There are various policy standards and laws at the state, federal, and even at the international level. You have to think about how far video reaches around the globe, and so not just taking into consideration just US-based practices. This is just an example of some compliance as far as Section 508, which is in the process of being rewritten, and also the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the WCAG, from the World Wide Web Consortium, the W3C. These were released last year. Previously, their version was the WCAG 1.0. This slide just illustrates some of the most, you know, common examples of making video accessible that go across these different laws and standards. Just to clarify, the WCAG is a standard for web accessibility but it is not a law. The 508 was based on the WCAG''s standards. They''re really trying to incorporate the new WCAG 2.0 standards in regards to the updates that are being done on Section 508. So some of the key concepts are text alternatives for all non-text content, syncing alternatives for multimedia, linking to the applet or required plug-in as far as providing a link to be able to download, whether it''s a Flash video or a Windows player or any other type of plug-in that''s required to view the video properly. You also want any of your technology for viewing the video to be directly accessible or compatible with assistive technology, keyboard only use, screen reader, magnifier. Another thing to consider as far as compliance and also accessibility and video is the color. Information cannot be conveyed by color alone, and you really want to have sufficient contrast between background and content. Now the old standards about contrast just used to say sufficient so that was kind of left up to the developer, kind of personal preference. But now, actually, in the new WCAG 2.0 standards, there are specific references about the brightness difference, the color difference, specifically with the WCAG 2.0 to get Level Double-A compliance as the standard or the guideline 1.4.3. For minimum contrast, the visual presentation, the text, and images of text used to be a contrast ratio of at least 5 to 1. And you''re like, well, 5 to 1, how do I measure that? Well, there are various tools, many of them free, that are available to help you identify sufficient color contrast such as the online color evaluation tool, the color contrast analyzer, which is an extension for the Firefox web browser, and also the contrast analyzer. Some other things just to think of, a good resource as far as comparing compliance and how to get to especially achieve the new WCAG 2.0 standards, there was a blog posting by Terrill Thomas who is -- works for the University of Washington, Do-It project. And he did a series on his blog which was also a presentation from the 2008 Accessing Higher Ground conference in Boulder, Colorado on the Do-It Video Search Meets WCAG 2.0. And their video search is actually an application that allows people to search the full text of their video library using closed captions. And what he documented was their efforts to conform play-by-play to the different criteria and guidelines of the WCAG 2.0. A quick evaluation that you can do on accessible video is ask yourself if I can''t see or hear the media, you know, how am I getting this message. You want to double check that any captions provided are synced, the transcript is provided, there''s a link to download the plug-in, that the controls are screen reader and keyboard accessible. Again, that there''s contrast between the background and the content. You also -- especially, if this is embedded into a web page, you want to make sure that the web page also validates to the standards. Other things to consider which are a much higher level -- conformance level and best practice is the sign language interpretation, the reading level, the visual presentation, and also the use of abbreviations. Thank you, Catherine, for providing in the text box the link to the add-on for the Mozilla Firefox extension. Some of the accessible video key features; these are the things that really are important to making your video accessible is the transcript, the captions, the video or audio file, and, particularly, you really have to think about the file format. Not all file formats are created equally, nor do they transcend from camera device, to software, to the web. You always have to be keeping the file format at the forefront. Also, there''s the media player that you have to consider and audio description. So a transcript is really kind of the key starting point of your accessible video. It is a plain text file of the audio or video content. And for the presentation, we''ll provide a little more information on this. Right now we''re just identifying the terms of what these key features mean. You really want to provide a link to access the transcript and also publish either the text file of the transcript and, or, the web page. The text file is important, especially for individuals who are deaf-blind. Some of the sources the way that you can get this transcript are: you can capture it from the actual production, typed by hand, voice recognition, speech-to-text software, also, if, you know, like in this webinar, we''re having captioning; so it can be done through a live captioner as well. Captions are the text of the spoken word that is synchronized, accessible, and equivalent. It not only includes whatever is said but also non-speech audible information such as sound effects, music, laughter, any type of other actions, and speaker identification. And captions are different than subtitles -- it''s not -- which relate to the translation of information -- and subtitles do not display everything that captions do. In some countries and in some places, people use these terms interchangeably but there is a difference between them. Captions can come in open captioning or OC. There is an icon that represents open captioning, which isn''t usually seen too much, generally, because captions are just there. They''re burned in. They''re always visible. But the icon for open captioning is ONC in black text on top of a white square. There''s closed captioning or CC, and this is a type of captioning that the user can turn on or off. And there''s also controls that can be customized in the device as far as the closed captioning, or there''s also real-time captioning. Again, like what is being done with this webinar. It''s live. It''s synced with the delivery of the dialogue and the audio. The captioning can occur within the application, like within the web conferencing software, or it may be running parallel, like in a separate window, or another type of application. Audio description, a.k.a., also known as descriptive video, is an audio description of the key visual elements. This is really helpful to individuals who are blind, low vision, or anyone who''s able to use video. It usually describes the actions, costumes, gestures, and scene changes. It is a separate audio track that''s synced with the video within the natural pauses. It really is an art form. Most of the time it is done professionally because it -- this requires just the right amount of technique and knowledge to be able to get that synced within those natural pauses. But as far as audio description, one of the key things is you could actually even avoid doing an audio description track if you consider pre-production, how you''re describing, or how the actions are taking place. If your video is any longer than 2 or 3 minutes, you really should -- it''s kind of best practice to have it professionally done. I''m going to show you just a snippet. We''re going to hear a snippet within the web conferencing software. I''m going to play an audio description and the captioner will, of course, translate what is being said within the captioning window. I''m sorry that some individuals were unable to hear the audio. What it was describing was the Universal Studio''s icon in action, like, before movie starts. It was describing how the light emitted from behind the globe, and, the words, Universal, came flashing around, followed by the text www.universalstudios.com. I do include other examples at the end of the presentation, I did provide the links and other examples of audio description for further information review. One of the other key things as far as accessible video is the video or audio file and the media players. Each media player plays different file formats. And this is what you want to be able to determine and think about as you''re developing the video - where you want it to go, especially if you''re going to use a standalone player. Is everybody there now seeing video, audio files, and media players? Okay. For Microsoft Windows Media Player, it will play WMD files and ADI files. The audio files are WMA. For Apple-Quick Time and iTunes, those are MOV files and QT files. For audio files, those are M4P files. For the Real Network or Real Player, those are dot RM files. The dot RA and dot REM are audio files for Real Network. For Flash player, FLV files or SWF are Flash files, and the audio file is an MP3. For the VideoLAN VLC Media Player, it''s dot SWF and dot FLV files. For video and for audio, it''s MP3, M4P and, then, also, there''s the YouTube player which accepts a variety- dot WMD, dot 3GP, dot AVI, dot MVO, dot MP4, dot MPeg, dot FLV, dot SWF, and dot MKV files. As far as accessible and free video players, one thing to know is if you embed the YouTube player in your website, it is not completely accessible. OSU, Ohio State University Web Accessibility Center has actually developed some instructions for accessible YouTube player controls. It does require some developer knowledge but all the code instructions are free. The JW Player is a Flash only player which supports captions and audio descriptions. The VideoLAN WLC Media Player supports captions and audio descriptions. A CC Player which is also a Flash player from the National Center for Accessible Media, for this player, developer knowledge is helpful but it''s not vital. Currently, YouTube does not play or support audio descriptions. For planning for accessible video, the things that you need, of course, are the video or audio file, the transcript of the audio portion of the video, a captioning tool or service. And you really want to think about developing that plan for the captions, thinking about the delivery of the media, the workflow. Keep in mind the time, the money, and the resources. And you really want to be aware of, you know, any issues, standards, tools, and services. When you plan the video, you know, think about the audience, the Internet connectivity method, the format. Think about some of the issues too as far as download time and storage capacity. How, as I previously mentioned, that media players and even cameras and software use different formats. There are different types as far as the delivery. There''s streaming media, which is also known as a.k.a., VOD, Video On Demand, and this is preferable if you have large files, and it enables viewers to be able to jump back and forth in the content. They experience it as they download it and it''s almost in real-time to the viewer. This is better than progressive downloads. The other thing about progressive downloads is a copy would actually exist on the viewer''s computer. As far as the workflow and the impact of the issues, you also want to think about the staff support and any type of collaboration. As far as production and the use of flexibility, you want to think about how formats change, how devices change. And you want to think about the popularity and availability of video sources. The key thing in accessible video is the time. It''s really detailed work. It requires review, accuracy, and grammar. Even with the YouTube new features -- which I''m going to discuss a little bit later in the presentation as well -- you still can''t just leave it to YouTube to do all the work for you. It''s a real time saver but it''s not a hundred percent perfect. In making accessible video, you really have to keep in mind that the transcription is the most time consuming part of it. And in making video, keep in mind that the time involved is 5 to 10 times the length of the video. So like for a five-minute video, you''re talking 25 minutes to an hour, or for 15 minute videos, one and a half to two and a half hours. There are various captioning tools and services that are available. There''s the DIY, the Do-It-Yourself. There''s web software, and then, of course, there''s third-party or services that will do the captioning for you. Again, the time consideration is the biggest thing as far as captioning. You also have to think about the training, the learning curve, the support, how much video you''re going to put up, and making sure that you have room for growth. You really are going to need a dedicated server for video. It takes up a lot of space, especially if you get into high definition. If you''re using students, you have to think of turnover as well, semesters, also, just the cost as far as the space, equipment, training, hiring tech support, and the management. As you can see on the slide, there are quite a few different Do-It-Yourself captioning tools that are available. You have quite a selection for free and those that require some money to purchase. I''m just going to highlight real briefly as far as MAGPI which is the National Center for Accessible Media. World Caption is from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and it''s for a Mac. Subtitle Workshop is a download from the Internet. CC for Flash is actually a component from the National Center for Accessible Media where Flash developers can customize the captioning. There''s CapScribe, McCall, Subtitle, Horse, and Jubilar. As far as purchased captioning tools, there''s Hi-Caption, Softel Swift, Quick Time Pro, MovCaptioner, Adobe Captivate, CaptionKeeper, which actually takes television captioning and converts it to a format for web, and there''s Captionate and MacCaption as well. And as far as preferences or tools, it really depends upon your need. Sometimes just because a tool is free, it may not be the best tool for your needs. For audio description tools, there''s quite a few, not as many as the captioning tools that also do audio description. MAGPI, Quick Time Pro, Adobe Premier or Audition, Apple iMovie, and GarageBand. Of course, with audio description it''s more of a best practice, especially for longer videos to hire third-party service providers. One of the key recognized parties or providers that do audio description is Media Access Group, but there are other providers as well that do provide audio description. As far as if you''re using any type of web software or third-party, again, you want to keep in mind budget, your type of caption data files, and, even if you''re doing, you know, web software or third-party, it''s still going to require your view because accuracy is not perfect. There are some systems that are available for capturing and captioning video such as Adobe Acrobat Connect, Panopto CourseCast, and Echo360. For third-party captioning providers, again, there''s a variety. You can even search for providers by location of services on the closed captioning web. AST, Automatic Sync Technologies, is where you can submit your video and transcript online, and they even have different rates available for bulk and group. As I mentioned before, the WGBH Media Access Group, Captain Colorado, worldwidevideo.com, Winged Words Transcription, Talking Type Captions, CaptionMax, Omega Transcripts, Vitech, and Subfly, and these are just a list of resources, by no means is this a recommendation. This is just some names as far as being able to get you started if you choose to use a third-party captioning provider. Just an example as far as if you''re planning for captioning a project that really details out the steps, as far as their whole process for captioning was the Stanford Captioning project, which really identified the problems with their project, the solutions, and the timeline. What they used was a captioning solution called Docsoft:AV, which is a combination software that was a server on desktop that allowed them to very quickly and easily produce captioning. Steps for accessible video: you need that video or audio file, the transcript, then, there''s the caption display where you segment and time code and you create the caption file. You combine the caption file with the video and you publish and distribute the caption media. Some really good resources as far as basic script and production tips for accessibility is producing programs and videos for viewers with vision impairments, this is the MAG, the Media Access Guide, Number 2, from the National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH. There''s accessible Digital Media Guidelines. Also, there''s a PDF file, Do-It-Yourself Video Guide for government agencies, that details a really nice process and resources as far as scripting and production. So you have your video file, again, some things just to think about when you''re doing that video file is just keep in mind as far as compression and decompression the codecs that are available between the device that you''re using to record the audio and then the software and then what kind of final output or product. You really want to think about the compatibility within the software or having to change formats because anytime that you have to change a video to one format or another, it loses some resolution. You also want to make sure that you have the correct equipment, especially the cables that go from the device directly into the computer. Also, just think about the copyright and the permissions for the location and the music. One thing, especially, if you''re using iTunes, they typically don''t import into edit software. You don''t want to have to have your old video, be ready to caption it and then find out that you have to redo it because of the audio or the music being different. Another good resource, there''s a video guide from usa.gov that discusses in a really nice table the file formats, the players, and the software compatibility. So in the transcript when you''re making your transcripts, you want to transcribe any of the spoken words and describe any other aspects, as I previously said, as far as things that convey information on screen and off screen like narration, sound effects, or any pickup cues. You really want to type contractions as they''re spoken. You''re going to follow standard capitalization and punctuation. Don''t spell out numbers. At the end, identify any captioning credits and say actually in the transcript. As far as the sentence size for your captions, you really only want them to be like 1 to 2 sentences. You want to change as little as possible keeping that original language word for word, except for fillers. Don''t water down a rewrite, unless it''s required for the presentation rate. You really want to make it easy to read, consistent, and always do your spell check on the transcript. As far as some conventions in your transcript, and a transcript is different than the captioning files, although, it is a good lead-up to making that caption file. What you want to do is identify speakers by putting a double arrow before the speaker''s name or have the speaker''s name and then put a colon. You want to put non-audible information and sounds in brackets, or parentheses is also acceptable. Singing, where possible, you want to surround that with a musical note. And if you know the name of the song and, or, the singer, identify that as well. If there''s any titles or anything that''s being read aloud, you want to put that in italics. If something''s unclear, you want to identify that in brackets as inaudible or even silence. On screen there''s now an example of a transcript. The other thing you want to make sure that you include in a transcript is also that audio description. Many times if people have the audio description, you know, they don''t include that and that''s also an important part of the transcript. So on this transcript here, it says, you know, bang. Sound of the door slamming. And that''s in brackets because it''s not dialogue. Then, it says describer, for audio description: A woman runs hurriedly out of a house and toward her husband, who is mowing the lawn. Then, the speaker, Lisa: Do you know where Scruffy is? Then, the describer: Man stops mowing and looks puzzled at his wife. Dan, the next speaker: I haven''t seen him for 20 minutes. In brackets: Sound of digging. Dan says oh, no, Scruffy is in the flowerbeds. So now that you have your transcript, what you want to do is make the transcript just kind of flow, but, then, actually, when you want to prepare it for the caption file, you want, again to make sure that it''s media edited, that it''s final. Even if you''re working with captioning software, it''s best to have that transcript ahead of time. Many captioning tools will allow you to import that, and then you can break it up into the captions. If you''re doing the caption file just as a text file within, like Notepad, you want to do a single space between each sentence. You want to do a double space if you''re creating a new caption, if there''s a long pause, or after the last line to avoid dropping the last caption. You also want to make sure that you check the time code is 000 in the beginning and your final time code is MPF at the end of the caption, at the end of the media, again, so it does not get dropped. As far as preparing the captions, that I was saying before, when you''re doing it just move to the next line or break for the caption when it''s appropriate or logical. You really want to think about readability and how it''s going to flow. On the screen is an example of a screen shot, this is taken from the HiSoftware, Hi-Caption Studio and shows how the interface would be if you''re creating the captions within a captioning tool. Where there''s a spot where the video is played, you can start stop it, and then it shows the captions on the left side and how you can break them up and their start time and edit them. Each captioning software has a different type of interface. As far as caption styles, you want to contrast the background and the font color. It''s best to have black-white on a transparent background or black-yellow letters. It''s mixed cases accessible, you want a font type -- it''s best in San Serif, especially for Internet, and San Serif fonts are like Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana. The font size is 12 Point. You want to have that caption positioned at the bottom, and you want the alignment to be left aligned. That''s really better than center, although center is acceptable, but for readability, it''s much better to have them left aligned. The caption width is usually the same width as the video. It takes up about 80 pixels on the bottom of a screen, and the amount of words that can display in a caption area depends on what you define as the size. Some really good resources as far as captions are the captioning key, guidelines, and preferred styles, which is available online. It''s available online or it can be downloaded in a PDF file and also the National Center for Accessible Digital Media Design Guidelines. It''s available online or as a CD. A caption file, again, has different formats accepted by different players. The Microsoft Windows Media Player has a SAMI file as its caption file which is Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange. The Apple has QT, Quick Time Text Track. There''s SMIL which is the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language. TText for RealNetwork; it''s RT. A SMIL file for Adobe Flash; it''s a DFXP which is Distribution Format Exchange Profile; and TTML. For YouTube, it''s SR2 which is SubRip Subtitle or SBV SUB SubViewer file. This is just an example of a caption file which shows the timestamp, the start, followed by a comma, then, the end timestamp. You see that it''s -- there''s a space before the next caption starts, again, listing the time code start and end. Just a couple other things to keep in mind, use consistent naming convention to identify which caption files go to the video file. You really want to use separate folders. And keep in mind that SAMI and SMIL files use the same extension; so you always want to do SMIL, SMI files with a SMIL extension, and SAMI files with the SMI extension. If you''re doing multiple languages, the caption file can really impact the performance of the display, and you want to use a single caption file for each language. If you, again, use online transition tools, you''ll need to check them. They''re not a hundred percent correct. And there are different tools available free and online to convert caption files from one format to another such as the SRT to DFXP converter, that''s available from Stanford. An example of accessible video that''s searchable is the Ecorner Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner where it has the transcript, and if you select the transcript, it goes to the exact point in the video. Then, another example of video that''s very good and very well done it''s Open Caption; it''s audio described. It comes from George Brown College on Why Caption Media. And it''s uniquely narrated by an individual who is deaf and uses sign language. Another accessible video is Perkins School for the Blind Webcast which showcases the embedded Flash which showcases the embedded Flash videos containing the captions of audio description. Then, in the last five minutes of the presentation, I want to highlight the YouTube video, which is a real boon as far as getting video captioned on the Internet, especially because YouTube videos are 42 percent of the videos that are out there. They have the market share. One thing, though, you want to think about is intellectual property or privacy concerns. YouTube will accept video uploaded in ADI, MOV, WMV, and MPG but the maximum size is only 2 Gigabytes and the maximum length is 10 minutes. For captions and subtitles, they have some really good help files available through YouTube. Over the next slides I just want to mention the steps as far as auto captioning. The auto captioning feature all you need is a YouTube account and your video in English then you upload it to YouTube. When you login, you basically select the video and then you request processing of the video where they''ll actually create the caption file for you with the captions and the time codes. It''s available within a few days. But you really want to check because it''s very poor, often hilarious results. One time we put up a video and it said Chair of the Date Rapist, instead of Chair of the State Rehabilitation; so speech recognition is not there. On screen is just an example of the captions and subtitles pane that shows where you can choose and create those videos. It shows how the process of the auto captioning evolves. The YouTube auto timing feature what''s different about this is you provide the transcript, just the transcript and you upload it. And, again, YouTube will create that caption file for you but it will put in the time codes using your transcript. This is a real time saver because after you''re done with it, you can download it and actually transfer it into other languages, other formats that you may need and edit it too, which will be needed. So this is a screen shot showing on the captions subtitles pane where you attach the file and you would choose transcript file and you identify the language. You can provide a name, if you want. YouTube actually also provides some tips as far as doing your transcript and those are keeping up with the same ones as far as previously mentioned, like a double line between captions and making sure your formatting is correct as far as the speakers, identification, and any non-sound information. If you actually have the caption file with the time code already done, then you can also upload that to YouTube. Again, after it''s complete, I suggest you download the file because sometimes YouTube can make changes to your file as well. And just so you know, that when you download it, only you as the owner and owner of the video can do that. The thing about YouTube it does download in a dot SPV file which is a text file with the time code information and you use that with the caption software open in text editor. We''re going to wrap up now for questions and--- information, I know we have quite a few. There are a couple other slides just so you know on optimizing Flash video access as far as making handheld media and mobile devices available. So I thank you very much for your attention and presentation. We''ll direct to questions now. Thank you very much.
Okay. We''re going to open it up for questions. Thank you Marsha. If you have any questions, go ahead and type them and Marsha will answer them. This archive will be available and posted on the ADA audio site. And Marshas e-mail is available for questions as well as our e-mail at the Great Lakes ADA Center to answer some questions. So I''ll turn it back to Marsha to answer the questions that are coming through the chat area. We will post the -- there were just a few slight changes on the PowerPoint, mostly it was put into our ADA online format so those will be posted. And Marsha will answer the question on the Flash video recommendations. Marsha Schwanke: Gabriel was asking about the Flash hoping to hear about making videos Flash accessible when embedded in a website. They have lots of videos online that are captioned that they are completely inaccessible using screen readers. Do you have suggestions or tips? One of the things is Gabriel it depends where they are. If they''re on your site, using an accessible player, like the CC Player, will really help as far as doing that. That''s a real good place to start as far as making them accessible. The National Center for Accessible Media has a lot of good resources and tutorials as well as WebAim on how to make Flash videos accessible. Brian asked, you know, what is the best place to start? The best place to start is with making sure that you have that transcript of the file. If you can use YouTube, that will save a lot. One of the good things is you just have to have a YouTube account and you can even choose not to make videos public. There are three different settings on YouTube videos. You can make it where it''s unlisted where only someone who has the link can view it or you could make it private or you can make it publicly available to all. And so having that transcript, you know, trying to use that auto timing is a good place to start. Jamie asked is it possible to edit the captioning for YouTube after auto captioning? Yes. Whether you''re using the auto timing or the auto captioning or even you''re putting up a download file or if you''re putting up your own captioning file, there''s always the option on the captions and subtitles pane underneath the track where you can choose to download that particular caption file and edit it. It will download again as a dot SBV file which you can open up in a text editor, like Notepad, and make any corrections that are needed. Marcy is asking what do you need to make your captions more searchable? The thing to make your captions more searchable is just providing that text transcript available online because that will be downloaded. By having those closed captions, as opposed to open captions, that really helps as well as far as searching, and even if you''re providing tags. One of the other things is that YouTube provides different tags where you can enter in, you know, keywords that people can more readily find and search your information. You can do that as well on your own site too at the bottom of a transcript, even providing tags or keywords that will help search engines find the information more readily. Jamie says that Catherine thinks you can edit after auto captioning in YouTube but want a little more information or a link to follow. What you want to go to is on YouTube''s help site, search for editing captions and auto captioning, and that will give you exact information as far as editing the auto captioning. Brian asked what is a good format to reach the most people? And, again, the most people is making sure that, that video is out there and accessible. Instead of doing a link to a standalone file, you want to use -- especially, like a player, like the VideoLAN, that helps make it more accessible and more readily available; so the player -- actually, using those, you know, YouTube is a great avenue too as far as getting the word out because it''s a social networking site. Cheryl asked what did you mean by the term sync? Sync means that the text, the caption, and, or, the audio description are occurring at the same point in time as on the video. That''s where you want to have those time codes that are created either by the captioning tool actually create that to get it started. If you''re using a captioning tool, like a Do-It-Yourself, what it does is it -- you''ll have to listen to the video and hit when you want it to start and end if you''re doing it yourself. And you want to try to get those occurring as closer at the exact same time as possible. Any other questions? Resources? Janet Peters: Thank you Marsha for an excellent presentation. Thank you everyone for your attention and participation in the series. I''m going to put a link up for our evaluation. Please evaluate the session. We do read these evaluations and try to make the sessions better based on your feedback. And you will be receiving the archive information with the link to this session soon. I want to thank you all again and thank Marsha for a great presentation. Thanks.