Techniques for Creating Accessible, Closed Captioned Web-Based Video California State University - Northridge 21st Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference Los Angeles, California March 22, David Klein K. “Fritz” Thompson

Flash  Video is played back by Flash Player  Version 7 of the Flash Player in the browser required for the end user  Interface (controls, layout) located in.swf file

Flash Video  Frustrated with “player wars”  Lack of standards compliance  Continual, relentless upgrades  Difficulty in upgrading – pushing users toward paid versions  Hijacking of media types / file extensions

Flash Rationale  Becoming more accessible by version 6  Full integration with video by version 7  Greater installed base  Handles video well  Fast  Developer-level flexibility  Can revise interface as needed  Control over accessibility (within Flash capabilities)

Flash Files  Video .flv  Caption file  We use the QuickTime caption file  XML configuration file  Integrates video and caption files  Flash player (Shockwave) .swf compiled from Flash code  HTML  Flash code file (.fla)  Optional for further development

Flash Video Player Assembly  The Flash playback engine – videoname.swf  The video – videoname.flv  The caption file – videoname.en_US.qt.txt  Same caption file as used for QT (or SAMI file is possible)  The caption control file – captions.xml  Includes URLs to video and captions files  User can toggle captions in the video player with CC icon (on by default)

Captions.xml File Characteristics  Use XML standards  Tags case sensitive  All elements closed  xxx (open and close tags)  (no explicit close tag; use the slash)

XML Configuration <flashcaptioning><ccconfig><CaptionLocation>captionfile.txt</CaptionLocation><VideoLocation>video.flv</VideoLocation><VideoSizeWidth>240</VideoSizeWidth><VideoSizeHeight>180</VideoSizeHeight> <VideoTotalTime> </VideoTotalTime> <XMLFileUsed></XMLFileUsed></ccconfig></flashcaptioning>

Flash Video Player Activity  Handout: Flash captions.xml Activity - Assemble Files  Objective: Modify an XML file and assemble the QuickTime captions file with the Flash video player to create a captioned, Flash video.

Flash Video Player Files  Place all files together in a folder  Video (.flv)  Caption file (video_caption.txt)  XML file (caption.xml)  Flash video player file (.swf)

Flash Security  Keep files in same folder when possible  Use BASE attribute in HTML  </object  And  And  Test thoroughly, especially among browsers and browser versions  More:  

NCAM’s CC For Flash  Display New Captions Can import and display a new caption file at any time  Dynamic Styles Recognizes certain style changes in DFXP files  Language List Provides a list of languages found in DFXP files  Change Caption Language Can change to another caption language while video is playing  Search Can search for a string of text in the caption file and return the time of the next instance where the text occurs in a caption (available for external caption files only)

ccPlayer (Flash video player)  Flash video player for those who don’t want to author their own  Uses the CC for Flash component to display captions  Can be embedded in any HTML page  Plays captions from external DFXP and QTtext files or embedded captions  Minimal programming experience necessary