[Athen] Captioning, Transcripts and a Teachable moment

[Shelley Haven]

Wow, John -- that's fantastic!  Congratulations 
on your success in helping make this possible.  I 
will definitely check it out and pass it along.

- Shelley Haven




>All,

>

>Many of you already know that I am passionate 

>about getting transcripts and captioning added 

>to on-line videos.  I've always tried to frame 

>the dialogue around the greater benefit 

>captioning/transcripts provide to all users, not 

>just those in a particular disabled community.

>

>Back before Christmas, I was approached by a web 

>developer who was working on a project for NASA: 

>an out-reach program geared towards students at 

>all levels (K-4 through "higher ed") that 

>essentially encouraged students to use NASA 

>Videos and create "remixes".  Since NASA is 

>clearly a Section 508 respondent, the preview 

>videos on NASA's site required captioning 

>(Section 508 - b. Equivalent alternatives for 

>any multimedia presentation shall be 

>synchronized with the presentation), but the 

>developer was curious what to do regarding the 

>videos being offered as downloads. Somehow, she 

>ended up IM'ing me at work and we had an 

>interesting exchange.

>

>After a bit of discussion, I proposed that they 

>(NASA) include numerous 'pieces' of digital data 

>in a zip file, and some of those bits would be 

>the time-stamped transcript and 'flat' 

>transcript, so that the students would have 

>those pieces of the total 'picture' to use and 

>remix at the same time that they mixed and 

>mashed their visual media.

>

>NASA agreed!

>

>Late last week, the site was launched - a review 

>page can be found here: 

><http://tinyurl.com/bmptxd>http://tinyurl.com/bmptxd 

>. While a "How to Add Captioning" tutorial is 

>still not available (note to self - contact the 

>contractor to discuss), "on-it" educators at 

>least now have the tools to take the ball and 

>run with it: not only will students be learning 

>about space related topics, but the potential 

>for learning 'multi-media production' (which is 

>clearly also part of the bigger picture) that is 

>inclusionary (through the addition of captions) 

>exists - students can be taught that adding 

>captions is simply part of the bigger production 

>work-flow.  The current 'hard part' - getting 

>the transcript - has been done already by NASA, 

>so remixing and adding 'new' caption files to 

>the 'new' videos is relatively easy and 

>teachable.

>

>Or at least, that is my hope.  For those of you 

>reading this and who are involved in teaching, 

>alt media production or a related endeavor, I 

>ask that maybe you help push that ball along as 

>well.  NASA has given us a great starting point, 

>but we, accessibility advocates, need to help 

>highlight that great start, and help other 

>educators seize that start point and work it. 

>It would be *SO COOL* to start seeing these 

>Student/NASA remixes on YouTube with captions 

>(YouTube now supports .srt caption files), so 

>let's go do it!

>

>Thanks!

>

>JF

>

>See also:

>·         Stanford Captioning: 

><http://captioning.stanford.edu>http://captioning.stanford.edu

>·         WebAIM - Web Captioning Overview: 

><http://webaim.org/techniques/captions/>http://webaim.org/techniques/captions/

>·         YouTube - Add captions or subtitle 

>tracks to your videos: 

><http://www.youtube.com/t/captions_about>http://www.youtube.com/t/captions_about

>·         JW FLV Player (A sweet little FLASH 

>based player that scores incredibly high marks 

>for accessibility supporting Closed Captions 

>*AND* descriptive audio): 

><http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/tutorials/Making-Video-Accessible>http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/tutorials/Making-Video-Accessible

>·         Easy YouTube Player (Christian 

>Heilmann's remixed YouTube player): 

><http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube/>http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube/

>·         Captioning Media for iTunes: 

><http://soap.stanford.edu/show.php?contentid=89>http://soap.stanford.edu/show.php?contentid=89

>

>

>(Hey listees - have any other great resources?  Post them to the list!)

>

>

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