October 4, 2007
AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! Unite to Advance
Online Media Captioning
In an effort to overcome technology and production barriers, the leading
providers of Web-based video have joined with media access pioneer WGBH/Boston
to develop solutions that will increase the amount of online video
accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have asked WGBH and its Carl and Ruth
Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) to establish
and manage the Internet Captioning Forum (ICF). The ICF will initially
address the technical challenges presented by online video repurposed
from broadcast or other previously captioned sources, as well as video
created specifically for the Web.
"More and more people are turning to the Internet to get their news,
watch programs and other video,” says WGBH's Director of Media Access,
Larry Goldberg. "The scarcity of captions online is due to a variety of
challenges, including a proliferation of media and text formats and
players, editing of programs originally distributed with captions, and
lack of clear online caption production and delivery requirements. The
founding members of the ICF are all companies long dedicated to making
their products and services accessible to people with disabilities. They
recognize that working together on this challenge is the best, fastest
and most practical way to get more captioned video on the Web."
The collaboration is expected to yield a range of solutions and tools,
among them:
- A database for online media distributors,
populated by major captioning providers, of previously captioned
programs. This tool will facilitate the location and reuse of
existing caption files.
- Technical and standards documents, case
studies and best practices for accomplishing pervasive online video
captioning.
- Demonstrations of innovative practices to
preserve captions while editing and digitizing captioned videos.
In addition to the global audience of people who
are deaf or hard of hearing, beneficiaries of the ICF's initiative also
include people who rely on translation engines to convert caption text
into other languages, people using online video in noisy situations or
at work, and search engines that use caption text to search and retrieve
online videos.
Cheryl Heppner, executive director of the Northern
Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons says, "The
formation of the Internet Captioning Forum will become a milestone in
the history of access to media. The community of people who are deaf or
hard of hearing has worked for decades to achieve the access to
television captioning we have now. The partnership of AOL, Google,
Microsoft and Yahoo! with WGBH promises to be a major step forward for
accessible online video."
ICF partners share their thoughts on the
collaboration:
"For several years now AOL has been working to
tackle the range of challenges to facilitate timely delivery of
captioned video content online: from the production and need for
automated publishing of caption data to support for the display of
captions in AOL’s web-based media player. Our efforts have demonstrated
that collaboration between content producers and content distributors is
the best way forward to achieve wide scale availability of captioned
video on the web. It is our hope that the Internet Caption Forum will
provide the venue for producers and distributors to come together to
define the model for production and delivery of captions on the Web." -
Tom Wlodkowski, Director of Accessibility, AOL
"The Internet has been one of the most
democratizing forces in the communications universe but it needs to
accommodate the needs of all its users, including those who have need of
features such as captions for audio and adaptable visual presentations.
The Forum is one way in which information service providers can work
together to establish reliable practices to improve access to
Internet-based information." - Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief
Internet Evangelist, Google
"As a leader in the online media space, we recognize our responsibility
to raise the level of service we supply so that it is accessible to
everyone. Microsoft is pleased to join with our industry colleagues and
WGBH to create solutions that will enable the industry to effectively
deliver online captioned media."
- Rob Sinclair, Director, Microsoft Accessibility Business Unit
"Yahoo! applauds the collaborative effort led by WGBH to create a
solution for making online video content accessible to all. Because the
need for online captioning will continue to grow across the Web, Yahoo!
is excited to join with our colleagues to develop quality responses to
this accessibility challenge. " - Victor Tsaran, Accessibility Program
Manager, Yahoo!
About NCAM/WGBH
The WGBH-Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National
Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) is a research, development and
advocacy entity that works to make existing and emerging technologies
accessible to all audiences. NCAM is part of the Media Access Group at
WGBH, which also includes The Caption Center (est. 1972), and
Descriptive Video Service® (est. 1990). For more information, visit
http://access.wgbh.org
WGBH Boston is America's preeminent public
broadcasting producer, the source of fully one-third of PBS's prime-time
lineup, along with some of public television's best-known lifestyle
shows and children's programs and many public radio favorites. WGBH is
also the leading producer of online content for pbs.org, one of the
most-visited dot-org sites on the Web. For more information, visit
www.wgbh.org .
Contacts:
WGBH: Mary Watkins, 617 300-3700,
mary_watkins@wgbh.org
OL: Jaymelina Esmele, 703 265-7831,
jaymelina.esmele@corp.aol.com
oogle: Gabriel Stricker, 650 930-3555,
press@google.com
icrosoft: Ellen Kampel, 425 706-3055,
ellenk@microsoft.com
ahoo!: Julie Han, 408 349-7661,
juliehan@yahoo-inc.com |
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