audio vs. transcripts
20 12 2004Recently, Meryl posted about “Google is a deaf user” in her blog which leads me to read this whole thing. It’s very important because everyone deserve same accessibility as you did.
In the podcasting session at BloggerCon 3, Steve Gillmor said, “We’re never going to do any transcripts on the Gillmor Gang.” (And got applause.) He went on to say that it’s about the metadata and people’s natural voices and this and that….
From Matt May’s weblog — http://www.bestkungfu.com/ — he work for World Wide Web Consortium. You can learn more about W3C at http://www.w3.org/
Matt made very good point in his recent blog regarding “no more transcripts” which do not offer any transcripts. I checked Gillmor Gang website and good enough, there’s no alternative than listening to this mp3 sounds.
Yes, its interesting and challenge for rest of the world to insure we all get proper accessibility to see and understand what they are talking about. It is no different between this and closed captioning and relay services.
Sure, we at deaf community should worry about it and need to watch & encourage them to offers alternative such as transcripts – otherwise we may end up fighting with ADA (American with Disabilities Act) to upgrade where government can enforce 3rd party over internet to support alternatives. We don’t want government to involved in it at at all however it will be our last solutions.
Finally, you should read numbers of comments he generated after he posted about it. Don’t miss this one out! Read under title “Google is a deaf user”.
http://www.bestkungfu.com/archive/date/2004/11/google-is-a-deaf-user/
I wonder if I could copy this audio and figure out how to play it – once I did it, I can call relay service and let operator type whole thing what it says and viola – it’s going be “transcripts” at no extra charge. Is it possible? Hmmm…
At this point, I still don’t know what they are talking about.
Grant W Laird Jr.
http://blog.grantlairdjr.com
Accessibility is talked about but not adhered to for low-vision users and now for the deaf audience. Unfortunately, ADA isn’t enforced in the government workplace or at government sites. It’s talked about.
That’s all. Our own California government sites are not accessible for the low-vision audience so I doubt that there would be any adhering or enforcing ADA. We have to spread the word and hope that developers will just be polite and code for everyone.
Thanks for the links.
P.S. I work for the State of California and develop accessible pages but most of the developers don’t follow the accessibility guidelines.
Meg,
I do appreciate your letting me know about it. I understood that it required 100% voluntary & cooperation from developers to make it possible.
We will keep trying — thanks!
gwlj