A project for social-production of captions (sub-titles) and audio description to improve the accessibility of video and multimedia. Presentation at the RNIB Techshare 2009 conference, ExCeL London in September 2009.
http://maltwiki.org
Co-presented with Wendy Porch, also of the Open University.
Logos: YouTube, iTunes U, Open University, Vimeo, Viddler, Tube Caption, Sign Tube, dot SUB, Caption First ... Wendy
95% transcripts for OU podcasts sounds good, however we're currently bad at providing links to those transcripts, outside iTunes. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, http://w3.org/TR/wcag20 Nick
Wendy
Wendy
http://www.eu4all-project.eu Wendy
Link to an example on a password protected site (Forth road bridge, OpenLearn). Wendy
Evaluation of 5 Flash players against 6-7 criteria YouTube: captions may be embeddable. Captions are portable. Only owner can transcribe/upload. Easy YouTube: HTML/ Javascript controls - v. easy! http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube/ JwPlayer: The only player to allow Audio Description via external file (MP3). * wmode= 'window' NCAM/ccFlash player: The most thoughtful pure Flash interface - separate play/pause, up/down volume. NCAM/ccFlash: "Advanced" captions - can be styled, colour, position. â Aaronâ player: OpenLaszlo-based â free software, potential. accessibility patch submitted. http://aaronwinborn.com . â Aaronâ player: OpenLaszlo/ Drupal â lots of potential! Flow player: 'Advanced' captions, scriptable, themable, free software. An audio SWF plugin is available - needs JS integration. http://flowplayer.org
A screen shot of the caption editor on the dotSUB multi-lingual captioning/subtitling web site, http://dotsub.com Nick
 + Transcription/ translation can be collaborative - Wiki-like  + Captions are portable (W3C TT XML, Subrip SRT)  + Ajax-based editor or import captions  + Powerful search, including in RSS  + Rich meta-data, including caption attribution  + Creative Commons licenses are encouraged  + Business model - captions created for free/ fee * Nick  - Uploader must be owner/ permission of owner of video **  - Connections not explicit  - Captions don't indicate person - TT styling - retrofit?  - Meta-data not exposed in RSS search or TT - YET  - No comments, rating, user profile - not "social" YET  ? Accessibility of site, player, editor
Logos at the bottom Wikipedia Foundation, OpenStreetMap, Project Gutenberg, GNU Free Software Foundation. Nick
A diagram representing the use of a browser plug-in or extension on a site like YouTube. Nick
A diagram representing the use of a module/filter for Web software such as Wordpress (blog), Drupal (content management), Moodle (online learning). Nick
At the top of this diagram is the content creator/author. There are then various layers â the simple markup you enter in for example a blog post, a plug-in for your blog software which converts this to an oEmbed Javascript call, and finally the âembed codeâ for the actual player. Nick
A screen shot of the new MALT player showing captions and coloured buttons at the bottom. Inspired by Chris Heilmann's Easy YouTube player, http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube Nick
Screen shot of a page from YouTube. showing a modified player with a transcript in a scrollable block inserted by the user Javascript (Greasemonkey script) below the player. Nick
The current alpha site is at, http://maltwiki.org (Soft-launch 19 October 2009. Was a demonstration at, iet-access.open.ac.uk/malt) http://twitter.com/nfreear
I've tested this, and can demonstrate with NVDA screen reader, and MSAA Inspect32... http://freear.org.uk/node/22 Nick
Blog post about personalization demo, 12 October 2009, http://freear.org.uk/node/25
Tags: co-create, subtitle, data portability, crowd source, alternative format, accessibility, annotate, usability, audio description, social production, podcast, multimedia, iTunesU, mentor, community, develop, YouTube, caption, open content, transcribe, Video, Wiki, plug-in, participate, free software, in-situ, web service, social-karma.