Techniques for Creating Accessible, Closed Captioned WebBased Video

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Techniques for Creating Accessible, Closed
Captioned Web-Based Video
David Klein K. Fritz Thompson

• California State University - Northridge21st
  Annual International Technology and
• Persons with Disabilities Conference
• Los Angeles, California
• March 22, 2006
• http//disability.law.uiowa.edu/lhpdc/publications
  /kleinpubs.html

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Captioning Definitions

• Closed captions
• Captions can be turned on/off by user
• Separate track in video
• Often, outside video area
• TV and Web different
• Open captions
• Captions always present
• Embedded in video
• Subtitles
• In UK, used synonymously for closed or open
  captioning
• In U.S. refers to language translation
• Transcription
• Text rendering of the audible portion of an event
• Audio Description
• Verbal description of the salient visual parts of
  a video

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Process - Transcribing Audio or Video

• High quality audio makes better movies and better
  transcripts
• Transcribe
• Speaker identification
• Nonverbal elements Laughter, Inaudible
• Transcript saved in text format
• Plain .txt for caption file
• Turn off smart quotes, other autocorrect options
  (Word)
• Smart quotes ,
• Curly apostrophes
• Em dash
• En dash

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Process - Precaptioning Steps

• Text is broken up into caption-sized chunks
• Based on Captioned Media Program ltlinkgt
  guidelines (but note that these are for TV)
• Caption timing software (MAGpie , HiCaption, or
  text editor)
• Transcribe directly or import prepared text files
• Attach time codes to text
• Export
• Plain text
• SAMI
• QuickTime SMIL
• RealPlayer SMIL

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Captioning with MAGpie Activity Part 1

• Handout MAGpie Part 1 - Attach Time Codes
• Objective Modify a transcript to become caption
  text.

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Captioning with MAGpie Activity Part 2

• Export caption files
• Objective Based on the caption text created in
  the last activity, generate three files that will
  be used to caption movies in further activities.

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Caption File Contents

• Caption text
• Time codes for synchronization with video
• Text formatting
• Font and font size
• Carriage returns
• Bolding, colors, etc.
• Speakers
• Language support

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Caption File QuickTime

• Open your QuickTime caption file
  (csun2006_captions.txt)
• Note use of curly brackets
• Heading
• QuickTime Text
• Timescale
• Font/font size
• Background and text color
• Justification
• Time codes
• QuickTime Standards HHMMSS.DD
• Caption text

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Caption File SAMI

• Open your SAMI caption file (csun2006.smi)
• XML
• Header
• Style tags
• Fonts
• Colors
• Text alignment
• Margins
• Body
• Time codes (SYNC tags)
• Speakers
• Language
• Captions

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Break?

• Take 15 minutes