Bericht aan de webmaster van Change.gov
Zelfs de nieuwe president van de Verenigde Staten heeft baat bij de verworvenheden van 'onze' Stijlgids...
Dear Webmaster,
Thanks for putting up the website Change.gov. For us in the Netherlands it's very interesting to see how president-elect Obama is using the internet to shape his agenda for the coming years. I was also pleased with the information on the Commitment to Accessibility page, especially with the sentence
This commitment to accessibility for all begins with this site and our efforts to ensure all functionality and all content is accessible to all Americans.But some time later I stumbled upon the page change.gov/page/content/discussservice, where a video is shown of which the content only is accessible to people who are not deaf and have a browser with a Flash plug-in. This is not in conformance with the US Section 508 Accessibility rules(1).
Two years ago, the central government in the Netherlands has addressed the issue of video accessibility and developed a video player that supports closed captioning and audio descriptions, a full transcription of the text, and fall-back options in the case that Flash is not supported(2). One additional advantage that turned out to be rather important, is that the content of video movies can be indexed by public search engines(3).
The video player that is used on Change.gov (not the YouTube.com player) has built-in options for accessibility, as it is equal to the one that was adapted for the Dutch government by developer Jeroen Wijering.
For newer versions of the player, a plug-in is available that adds support for closed captions and audio descriptions(4).I hope that this information is of value to you and that it helps in the fulfillment of your commitment to accessibility. Please feel free to contact me in case you are interested in more information on the subject.
With kind regards,
Raph de Rooij
web accessibility specialist
for the Netherlands' government
www.webguidelines.nl---
(1): § 1194.22 Web-based intranet and internet information and applications, part B:
"Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with the presentation"
ref: www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12#Web(2): The technical solution is available on www.minvws.nl/en/video/, an example in English - unfortunately without audio descriptions - on www.minvws.nl/en/themes/health-insurance-system/the-new-health-care-system-in-the-Netherlands-video/. Background information on the subject is published on www.accessibility.nl/internet/artikelen/audiovideo?languageId=2 (examples are available on the Dutch version of the article).
(3): Accessible video leads to search results: www.google.com/search?q=%22new+standard+insurance+for+all%22 and search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22new+standard+insurance+for+all%22
In the Netherlands, the page with the health insurance video (see note 2) is the first hit on both search engines(4): Accessibility plug-in for JW Player version 4.2 and up: www.longtailvideo.com/addons/plugins/56/Accessibility
PS:
Behalve dezelfde videospeler is er een interessante overeenkomst met de Stijlgids-website, die zichtbaar wordt als je cms intypt achter http://change.gov/ ....
Reacties
Raph, goed stukje research :-). Vooral de zoekresultaten zijn een mooi voorbeeld.
Kijken of Change.gov stap 2 wil zetten met de player…
Goed werk, prettig te zien dat dit soort dingen opgepakt worden. Overigens is whitehouse.gov voor zover ik kan nagaan nu helemaal overgestapt op YouTube (?), daar is op internet ook al discussie over (wenselijkheid e.d.).
Groet,
Erik