Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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How do blind people "watch" online videos? (self.Blind)
submitted by sudorobo
I'm working on a soon-to-be open-sourced project that basically componentizes web videos. I think it has the potential to also make it accessible to screen readers. If you're familiar with programming or web dev, you'd basically have an XML representation of stuff that's in the video, which I _think_ might be able to translate to how screen readers parse HTML. So, my questions are:
1) How do blind people "watch" online videos?
2) Ballpark, what percentage of online videos (everything from YouTube to a video on a website explaining their product) are accessible to blind people?
3) With a screen reader being able to scan through the video components, is this something you'd be interested in?
Thanks!
1) How do blind people "watch" online videos?
2) Ballpark, what percentage of online videos (everything from YouTube to a video on a website explaining their product) are accessible to blind people?
3) With a screen reader being able to scan through the video components, is this something you'd be interested in?
Thanks!
LanceThunder 5 points 5y ago
i think the easiest way to achieve what you are talking about is to just have someone record an audio track that describes what is going on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_Video_Service
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_Video_Service
sudorobo [OP] 1 points 5y ago
Very helpful. Thanks for sharing!
fastfinge 2 points 5y ago
You might also be interested in $1. Not quite what you're doing, but an effort with similar goals.
AllHarlowsEve 2 points 5y ago
Here's the issue I see with this. If a bit of text is pulled from a video, like, let's say a prank video that puts a warning in, which takes up a lot of the screen, but it's only there for literally a second.
If they're talking while it's there, or there's other noise, the screen reader wouldn't be able to read it, without the noises interfering, by the time it's completely off the screen.
If it just pulls it out like a video transcript on a secondary page, that's not awful, but it'd need to be like closed captions, and there's still the issue of people being like, "And this shirt" then holding up one to illustrate some sort of point.
I'd say most videos give you fair access to the content, and those that don't have any way of you getting what's going on, like videos with songs and text on the screen, are falling out of favor.
If they're talking while it's there, or there's other noise, the screen reader wouldn't be able to read it, without the noises interfering, by the time it's completely off the screen.
If it just pulls it out like a video transcript on a secondary page, that's not awful, but it'd need to be like closed captions, and there's still the issue of people being like, "And this shirt" then holding up one to illustrate some sort of point.
I'd say most videos give you fair access to the content, and those that don't have any way of you getting what's going on, like videos with songs and text on the screen, are falling out of favor.
bradley22 2 points 5y ago
I watch youtube mostly. It's fully accesssible when it comes to videos. It's a bit confusing, some days the box is there to type in and other days you have to press enter on the search button, then type into the box. I'd be willing to test this if that's possible. I watch a lot of youtube videos. What exactly would the screen reader tell me? take this video for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdRmMXUBttQ&pbjreload=10 It's a youtuber called markiplier. I know he's eating a ghost pepper but what else could your video script thing help me know?
sudorobo [OP] 2 points 5y ago
Hmm, so I think for an example like this, it's a bit hard to "componentize" it, since it's mostly one clip. In this case, it would probably be the same experience. I did leave an example for /u/extrablankets that aligns better with the benefits. Bottom-line, you'd be able to read on-screen text and get written descriptions (like `alt` tags) of images, short clips, animations, if the author adds them.
extrablankets 1 points 5y ago
So, who is tasked with adding all of these descriptions to videos? It seems like it could be tedious.
sudorobo [OP] 2 points 5y ago
I'll use a specific example: https://youtu.be/WmYd1eKxp5A. Of course it's not representative of most videos, but there are many, many examples (especially educational ones) where people put text on videos. It's inaccessible, just like when people raster text onto web images.
> who is tasked with adding all of these descriptions to videos?
The salient point is that it's not about _adding_ descriptions after the fact, but that with video, we're _losing_ this semantic information as part of the production process. The idea behind componentizing for accessibility is more along the lines of preserving components like text, images (maybe even with `alt` tags!), and other semantic information before the video renders it straight to pixels. If those components were preserved, the reader could read on-screen text as if it were a website.
Thoughts?
**edit**: I added a much shorter video (0:18) that is more representative of the problem around web video accessibility. I checked the CCs, and it's totally missing the on-screen text.
**edit 2**: Here's the on-screen text that's missing:
Which of these are AI problems?
- Answering questions on Jeopardy
- Configuring the dimensions for the basement of a new house.
- Tying shoelaces.
- Deciding on a route to a new destination.
- Making sense of a news broadcast.
- Designing a robot that walks on water.
- Establishing whether a flower pot can be used as a drinking cup.
- Deciding whether or not a new animal is a bird.
> who is tasked with adding all of these descriptions to videos?
The salient point is that it's not about _adding_ descriptions after the fact, but that with video, we're _losing_ this semantic information as part of the production process. The idea behind componentizing for accessibility is more along the lines of preserving components like text, images (maybe even with `alt` tags!), and other semantic information before the video renders it straight to pixels. If those components were preserved, the reader could read on-screen text as if it were a website.
Thoughts?
**edit**: I added a much shorter video (0:18) that is more representative of the problem around web video accessibility. I checked the CCs, and it's totally missing the on-screen text.
**edit 2**: Here's the on-screen text that's missing:
Which of these are AI problems?
- Answering questions on Jeopardy
- Configuring the dimensions for the basement of a new house.
- Tying shoelaces.
- Deciding on a route to a new destination.
- Making sense of a news broadcast.
- Designing a robot that walks on water.
- Establishing whether a flower pot can be used as a drinking cup.
- Deciding whether or not a new animal is a bird.
extrablankets 1 points 5y ago
Hey! Thanks for the response. I’ll respond as soon as I get a chance later. :)
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