Rep. Edward Markey is drafting legislation that would extend closed captioning and other rules for traditional TVs and telephones to their Internet-enabled counterparts.
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Next he'll want to insist on internet telephony having rotary dial for people who are pushbutton-phobic.
Moron.
(deaf, blind, etc), can be risky, at least someone is standing up
and speaking out, pointing to the glaring omissions in support
for the disabled on the internet. Sure they have standards for
creating web pages that are friendly for blind or partially blind
users, and putting in text to describe any sound clip or podcasts
or video being used on the site, most websites don't do this
anyway.
I myself work in the IT field, and I have severe-to-profound
sensorineural hearing loss. There are many drawbacks for me, I
cannot enjoy 90% of what a lot of people with hearing take for
granted: on-demand video or web radio, et al.
Although I don't agree that EVERYONE should be required to
provide these services, it would certainly be very beneficial to
me to be able to use more than a smattering of services out
there. Even iTunes, which I am happy they're finally STARTING to
close caption movies (and even then, the current list of
captioned movies is only around 40 to 60, depending on various
sources, and the selection usually sucks), they still have yet to
do so on TV shows that are normally captioned on TV.
All I want is just to be able to access some of the more popular
areas that exclusively use video (except for sites like YouTube, I
can understand why videos aren't captioned, they're made by
people like me, the general public, not everyone has the means
or the skills or time to do this), I would call out for news sites
that use video podcasts (hint hint C|NET!) to caption (or at least
have the option of turning on some form of captioning) when
viewing their podcasts.
In the end, I'm not saying that we need this legislation, all I'm
saying is that pointing this out and standing up for it will at
least get corporations to realize they're missing out on a large
section of consumers who would be more than happy to use
their services if they make them a little more disability friendly.
There are actually no devices that provide captioning for every video on the Internet. Most videos on the Internet are not captioned to begin with, and there is no technology available to generate free real-time captioning at a moment's notice for uncaptioned videos on the Internet. (Relay services only relay audio from phone calls, not audio on the Internet.) What was attributed to the deaf actor who was using sign language may not have been correctly interpreted by the interpreter, or may have been a rushed statement that couldn't be explained further due to time limitations.
In actuality, it is correct that deaf and hard of hearing people *have* been left out of this whirlwind of technological changes; for example, most videos of television broadcasts that were captioned when broadcast are not offered with the ability to view those captions. Thus a lot of important information that is only available via video is not accessible merely because the already created captions weren't repurposed for the Internet.
(There are a few movies from iTunes that have been made available with caption, but this is a function of the movie being provided with caption; the devices that can show those movies cannot show captions for other media that hasn't been captioned.)
Participants in these hearings have a very short time to make their comments or replies, so it is difficult to explain the complexity of captioning in a short amount of time when there are many other points to be made and when most of the partipants on the Hill should be familiar with these issues. The witnesses were addressing the informed members of the subcommittee, not the general public (which is not as well informed about captioning issues).
I was also pleased to see some very well thought-out and detailed replies to the story. These comments added additional depth and insight.
Our mission here at the Wireless Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (Wireless RERC) in Atlanta, Georgia, is: To promote equitable access to and use of wireless technologies by people with disabilities and encourage adoption of Universal Design in future generations of wireless devices and applications.
We do not take a position on how necessarily to achieve Universal Design for equitable access to wireless technology. But, we believe it to be essential for including everyone in these increasingly important communications media.
Universal design and access will continue to grow in importance as our population ages and as mobile communications become ever more critical parts of our daily lives.
Visit us on the web at:
http://www.wirelessrerc.org/
Also, feel free to post a comment at our blog site:http://www.mywirelessreview.com/
- by benjaminstraight July 13, 2008 2:36 PM PDT
- benjamin straight writes: Is cell phone tech a right to everyone?
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