Chapter and Verse Blog

by Penny Everett, VerseOne Accessibility Specialist

Following on from last week's blog, I am now looking at the next Success Criteria listed in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

1.2.1: Audio-only and video-only (Pre-recorded)
The rule of thumb is that Content Authors/Editors need to ensure they are offering an equivalent experience for deaf/blind users to that of other users.

So how can you do that?

Well, the simple answer is to start with a verbatim transcript for the audio on the same web page or a link to it on another page. This will enable a deaf person to read it.

That’s all well and good for the audio only, but what about video only, i.e. video with no sound?

This is much more complex and totally depends on the topic of the video. So you will have to make a judgement—is it reasonable to expect you to explain in writing to a blind person what the video is showing?

For instance, imagine a video with no sound showing how to make a cake...obviously everyone would benefit from written instructions. But what about a video which shows you a cuckoo disposing of its adopted siblings? In order to give a blind person an equivalent experience, the explanation could be quite lengthy. Perhaps it would be easier in this case to consider adding a voice-over. Here again, everyone would benefit and you could transcribe the voice-over.

This is all very time-consuming, but bear in mind the word "reasonable". Has your organisation got the resources for this, or do you feel justified in stating "If you are having any difficulty with viewing the video, please contact our..."? Just remember that barrister—the one you could meet in a Court of Law.

by Penny Everett, VerseOne Accessibility Specialist

VerseOne regularly runs free seminars on web accessibility all over the country, and during those sessions we cover a wide variety of topics. The presentations are always a huge success, but the feedback from attendees nearly always expresses concern at how little they know about accessibility and how much they have been doing wrong. Much as we'd like to, we can never dwell too long on any one particular subject because of the time constraint. We see our role at these sessions as one of creating awareness. So in this week's blog, I thought I'd go into a little bit more detail about one of the topics we cover briefly in the seminars: captioning.

Captioning, or perhaps I should say "accessible captioning," is not just a case of typing up word-for-word (verbatim) what was said. It is a lot more complicated than that.

Take the simple statement: "You should endeavour to offer as near an equal experience as possible to all your users." Well, let's look at your deaf users viewing your videos. The requirement at single-A conformance for WCAG 2.0 is to add sub-titles (aka captions). However, as the title of this blog suggests, this is an art in itself. For instance, do you know the answer to the following?

• How you describe relevant sound and its source—for example, a phone ringing, a motorbike revving up.
• That a combination of description and onomatopoeia* was the preference of over 56% of surveyed users.
• The recommended speed your users should be expected to read (the presentation rate) to be able to follow the captions. It will generally range from 120-160 words per minute, depending on the target audience and whether the content is theatrical or not.
• That editing of conversations should only be carried out when a caption exceeds a specified presentation rate limit. And that it should maintain both the original meaning, content, and essential vocabulary.
• How you write numbers such as fractions, dates, weights and measurements.
• How you make it clear who is speaking at a given moment.
• What words could confuse non-British audiences.
• That you shouldn't duplicate any words appearing in the video itself in the captions, although you should do so in the transcript.
• That no caption should be on screen for under 2 seconds.

*words that imitate sounds, such as cuckoo, pop, sizzle, and hiss.

If you can't answer the above questions, you might not be offering an equal experience to your deaf users despite going to the effort of adding captions to your videos.

Penny Everett will be giving more practical advice on Accessibility at the upcoming Housing and NHS Hot Topics events that will take place in London and Manchester in October and November.

To view the dates and agendas for these sessions and to reserve your organisation a free place click here.

by Penny Everett, VerseOne Accessibility Specialist

There are almost 9 million Britons who have some kind of hearing loss and, of these, 650,000 are profoundly or severely deaf.

If you can spare 30 minutes to watch Evelyn's commentary and demonstrations in her video, it will give you an extremely uplifting experience. She became profoundly deaf at the age of 12 and despite this went on to become a famous musician.

The fact that failing to add captions to your videos will cause you to fail WCAG 2.0 at Single-A conformance means this video is worth looking at to view the captioning alone. It offers captioning in 27 languages (the English version is 100% accurate).

Do you find that people have a very limited view of deafness? Most people have some hearing loss after the age of 60, but don't like to admit it to anyone as they fear there is stigma attached to it.

Have you added any sound to your website in the way of audio or video? How have you catered for your deaf users? Has it caused any problems for you or your website visitors? Did you know you still have responsibility for adding captioning to your videos even if you place them on YouTube?