Techniques for Creating Accessible, Closed Captioned Web-Based Video
David Klein and K. "Fritz" Thompson

Workshop at the California State University - Northridge annual conference: "Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference"

Los Angeles, CA
March 22, 2007

This workshop introduced participants to the basic concepts behind most web-based or network-based video and how to make it accessible to people with disabilities. The objective of this workshop was for the participants to work with video, deliverable in QuickTime and Flash, based on caption files created with MAGpie, a captioning program. The Flash Video Player is a web-based video player created by the workshop presenters and its Flash source code is available to the public. A CD, which included the activity instructions, compressed video, and caption text, was provided to the participants and can be downloaded below. (You should have PowerPoint or the PowerPoint viewer to view the PowerPoint files.)

Documents

  1. PowerPoint presentation 1 - Introduction and Compression (Part 1 RTF version)
  2. PowerPoint presentation 2 - MAGpie and Synchronizing Captions (Part 2 RTF version)
  3. PowerPoint presentation 3 - QuickTime (Part 3 RTF version)
  4. PowerPoint presentation 4 - Flash Video Player (Part 4 RTF version)
  5. PowerPoint presentation 5 - Techniques and tips for accessible, web-based video (Part 5 RTF version)
  6. Workshop CD files (access online)
  7. Download the Workshop CD (compiled and compressed in a zip file)
  8. Flash Video Player (zipped for download) - This file is the published Flash application (.swf file). Note that the appropriate accessibility features may not yet be enabled on this player so that the controls will be read by a screen reader (included in CD).
  9. Flash Video Player source (.fla file) - Created with Flash MX 2004 Professional. You will need at least Flash MX 2004 to view this file (included in CD).
  10. Sample configuration file (XML file in text format) - Required for the video player. Copy code and paste into a file called "captions.xml". Save in the same location as the .swf file. Replace parameters in the appropriate places with your own (included in CD).

Please note that this version of the video player may not be accessible to screen readers for the controls. I'm still working on that.