Accessibility in Video
If youâve been paying attention so far, you may be afraid to hear the accessibility story for web video. Donât be! Itâs actually not that bad, considering. All of the major playersâQuickTime, Windows Media, RealPlayer, and Flash Playerâsupport captioning. In fact, captioning is so well supported that there are scads of different formats to choose from!
Oh, wait. Thatâs not a good thing. But it could be a lot worse.
The reason captioning is such a mature technology is simple: itâs been around for decades. The French Chef, in 1971, was the first program to be âopen-captioned,â meaning that captions were overlaid on (or âburned intoâ) the source so that all viewers could see them. The Captioned ABC News, which was also open-captioned, made its debut in 1973. The closed captioning system, made official in 1980, uses extra bandwidth in the TV signal to send a captioning signal, which is decoded by a receiver, that used to be a set-top box intended for deaf and hard-of-hearing users. But by 1993, closed captioning decoders were required on all televisions 13â and larger. These days, itâs nearly impossible to find someone who hasnât seen captions, if only on the screen at her local sports bar.
Captioning often gets conflated with two similar terms, so letâs get them straight here:
- Transcripts
Word-for-word copies of what was spoken. They may also contain audio or visual cues, such that the transcript itself makes sense without the source ...
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