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Within reason we should provide content to as many people as possible.
However, having video transcripts would be a god-send, even though I'm not blind. There's plenty of interesting content that I'll never watch because I consider video a waste of time. (Yes, I'm one of those guys who listen to audio books at 4x)
Unless you have a compelling *visual* point to make, video is a rude disregard for your audience's time.
There are already a couple of startups doing automatic podcast transcription (i.e. audio-to-text), and extending this to video wouldn't be that difficult, by my imagination.
How do you think photo albums are supposed to presented to blind people? There are limitations to the extent that you can reasonably expected to make alternative forms of content available, but a plain ordinary e-commerce site has nothing about it that can't EASILY be made accessible to blind or partially-sited users: it's sheer laziness and lack of knowledge on the part of the developers.
In the YouTube case, blind people *should* be able to at least get the audio, the title, description, poster's name, date, and any comments, as well as access to the usual playback controls. If captions are available and they somehow don't intefere with the audio soundtrack, that's good too. You can't realistically magic the video itself in any form beyond the embedded audio or spoken captions, though, and if there are no captions supplied by the author of the video, then you can't present those (YouTube could conceivably be forced to allow them to be supplied and presented, though).
In the photo sharing case, it's the same deal: you perhaps can't view the photo, but you should be able to get all of the information ABOUT the photo, and navigate the site. You should be able to find out that I posted a photograph on Flickr publicly yesterday just as full-sighted person can.
Beyond that, though, there's an additional obligation level when it comes to e-commerce sites, because failing to cater for those with disabilities prevents them from taking advantage of products and services that are being sold (and it's not like lots of places don't have “web-only” deals and such).
User-generated content probably itself gains an exemption in terms of the content ITSELF (because there's a limit to how much control sites like YouTube can exert in this regard without making them useless—think of all the mobile phone camera videos that get uploaded, for example), but the sites that present the content still need to be accessible.
Building accessible sites can sometimes be tricky, but it's not rocket science, and it's not opposed to doing very much that we do on the web today. Bear in mind also two things: “blind” doesn't necessarily mean “no sight” (lots of people with poor eyesight are classified “blind” legally, but can experience the web reasonably well with the aid of magnifiers and high-contrast overlays), and “accessible” means “available to everyone (man or machine), not just people with disabilities”. Making sites accessible benefits everyone.
Uh, blind people can't see. Deaf people can't hear (and would need a transcript).
I realize that a person cannot "learn" to see or hear, but the concept is the same. If there is no chance of you doing something, you don't try and do it.
If I choose to convey my art through the visible word, that's my choice. I'll miss out on some readers(listeners) because my site isn't accessible to the blind. When will newspapers be forced to include a audio recording and a braille version with each paper sold?
That all being said, I think it's hard to argue that the web isn't a frontier place that is the future of a lot of communications and many sites will feel the need to add accessibility options, but that's the natural progression and shouldn't be forced.
A friend of mine does videoblogs in sign language, and accommodates me, and those who can't understand sign language by providing a summary of her main points. That's what's reasonable for her to do.
Yes, I appreciate _seeing_ the people you talk to. But no, I can't watch every video that's interesting. It's simply not possible. I watch the GigaOm show, because it's only weekly, very well edited and has had high-profile guests on every episode so far, but I could read through the interviews and topics in half the time, watching video snippets that are embedded in the text, where necessary.
If you're running such a platform and you don't, and I'm in some way looking for a legal target, you'd probably be first on my list.
Having said that, it may be possible to ask the bloggers who blog on behalf of an institution to make their blog accessible.
The role of companies hosting personal expressions, such as Youtube, is not clear to me.
Check out Redlasso's new player. All of our broadcast media clips include closed-captioning. Just click on the CC icon in the upper right corner of the player. You can check out a sample clip here:
http://www.myspace.com/nick_redlasso
Many more features to talk about, but it's good to see this issue create another opportunity for Redlasso!
(1) DORMANT COMMERCE CLAUSE - the internet is national thing, if not global. When I post something in Utah, people in California can read it. Am I purposely availing myself of California laws? Well, the thing is, if California makes that law, depending on its breadth, it will affect people that publish videos in other states negatively. California can't regulate citizens in Utah, Nevada, New York, or any other state. They don't have that power. So, I think, there could be a dormant commerce clause issue. And this leads to my second point.
(2) People that can't afford the transcripts, or amateur publishers, may just turn off their content to California readers. It's just like the Ad-blocker firefox add-on, with the guy blocking the add-on users. Just set it up to block IP addresses from California. By doing this, you don't come within the the constraints of California law and don't have to abide.
This could change things, though.
That's kind of sad, really.
At the very least, making your site accessible, will help the search-engine ranking especially with upcoming video search engines.
Glibly saying, "will visual art museums be sued by the blind under ADA?" is not clever or original at all.
Now, home videos are quite another matter.
And at some point you’ll notice that the Target lawsuit involves accessibility for blind people, not deaf.
I would advocate businesses and governmental services to caption their videos. Can't see it being enforceable on the home vlogging front so YouTube will be safe. All we can ask of you vloggers is to caption your vlogs or provide a transcript as a gesture of goodwill and in the spirit of freedom across the internet so the internet is not disabling us Deaf people.
Accessibility good. Government mandates bad.
Sure, measures can be taken for navigation for the blind, but nothing can be done about the content of a site, if that content is visually oriented.
Likewise for the deaf, sometimes things that go on with audio are for affect, and not just something you can put in a transcript. It seems ridiculous to try to legislate this.
And after all, isn't this free speech? For expression?