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Podcast #84: Web Axe 5-Year Anniversary

In celebration of its 5th anniversary, Dennis and Ross discuss the history of Web Axe and several memorable moments. Then, nine special guests provide excellent insight and information relating to web accessibility including Paul Boag and Bruce Lawson. It’s great stuff, don’t miss it!

Download Web Axe Episode 84 (Web Axe 5-Year Anniversary)

[Transcript of podcast 84]

Some History

Memorable Moments

Special Episode Podcast Contributors

Addendum: Podcast Corrections

  • Steve Grobschmidt’s last name was announced incorrectly (it’s not “Aquinas”, that’s part of his Twitter handle).
  • We state that there are 8 guest speakers; there’s actually 9!
  • We mentioned that Boagworld is no longer podcasting, but failed to mention that they plan on returning in January 2011. (Paul mentions this in his commentary.)
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Podcast #83: Fate of Longdesc in HTML5

What’s the fate of the “longdesc” attribute in HTML5? Can or should the “aria-labelledby” ARIA attribute replace it? These are some of the controversial issues discussed by Dennis and guests John Foliot (@johnfoliot), Everett Zufelt (@ezufelt), and Joe Dolson (@joedolson).

Download Web Axe Episode 83 (Fate of Longdesc in HTML5)

[transcript of podcast 83]

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Accessibility for HTML5 Video, Controls and Captions

As you probably know, HTML5 provides a video tag for rendering a video natively in a web browser (and audio as well). But unfortunately, as of now, HTML5 video isn’t very accessible, yet.

Controls

Browser support for native HTML5 video controls varies widely. No browsers but Opera provide keyboard-accessible controls. Well, you can also start/stop with keyboard in Firefox 3.6. To make the controls keyboard-accessible calls for JavaScript. This is fairly easy to do, and is quite fun to implement for web geeks like me. But nonetheless it requires JavaScript which obviously isn’t good for devices and browsers which don’t have JavaScript available.

Note that in Firefox 3.6 and below, disabling JavaScript also disables the native video controls! To bring up a contextual menu, you must do a mouse right-click in the video.

Captions

The HTML5 spec has a great plan for captions, timed tracks. It accommodates well for different types of roles (captions, subtitles, descriptions) and multiple languages. The format of the caption text files themselves may be similar to the time stamp format WebSRT (Web Subtitle Resource Tracks). Sadly, there is no support for timed tracks in any browser at this time. The code would go inside the video tag and would look something like this:


Fortunately, in the meantime, Bruce Lawson of Opera provides a method for JavaScript HTML5 video captions. The solution uses JavaScript to grab caption text from span tags with time attributes and place the text over a video. Neat! If JavaScript is unavailable, the caption text appears below the video.

About the Codecs/Containers

Not directly related to accessibility, but let’s take a look at the supported video codec/containers of the major browsers. First off, and not surprisingly, Internet Explorer doesn’t support any HTML5 video. And the word is that IE9 will only support WebM if it’s installed on the operating system.

So to cover all major browsers today, you’ll need to encode to an OGG and MP4 file, and then do a Flash video fall-back for IE. Here’s a great table on current support codecs/containers.

Video support in shipping browsers
Codecs/container IE Firefox Safari Chrome Opera iPhone Android
Theora+Vorbis+Ogg · 3.5+ · 5.0+ 10.5+ · ·
H.264+AAC+MP4 · · 3.0+ 5.0+ · 3.0+ 2.0+
WebM 9* 4 · 5.0+ 10.6+ · ·

It appears WebM will be the codec of the future, but again, it is only partially supported at this time.

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Link Roundup – May 2010

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Podcast #81: HTML5 and John Foliot

HTML5 is hot. It’s new, powerful, and exciting. But what is it exactly, and how will it make the web more accessible? Dennis discusses these issues and more with web accessibility veteran John Foliot. Topics include background on HTML5, browser support, new form functionality, how Canvas can be accessible, and much more!

Mr. Foliot runs the Stanford Online Accessibility Program. He is an active member of the W3C and is an integral part of the web accessibility community. He writes a blog entitled Unrepentant and you can find John on Twitter.

Download Web Axe Episode 81 (HTML5 and John Foliot)

[transcript of podcast 81]

Mentioned Resources

Other HTML5 Resources