HTML5 multimedia accessibility at DevCSI Accessibility Hack Day

Fate took me five miles up the road to Aston University for a DevCSI Accessibility Hack Day where I spoke on HTML5 multimedia accessibility. Here are my slides: Some resources

• Introduction to HTML5 video by Moi and Patrick Lauke
• Video for Everybody - Kroc Camen frankensteins in olde-worlde Flash embed code as fallback for HTML5 video
• Video API spec
• Spec for the <track> element for subtitles/ captioning etc
• WebVTT format explained by Ian Devlin
• Playr - lightweight polyfill script that fakes <track> support in browsers that don't have native support (eg, all of them)
• MediaElement.js - jQuery-based polyfill that fakes track support and degrades to custom Flash and Silverlight players that mimic the HTML5 MediaElement API for older browsers
• Synchronising multiple media elements - nascent specification: highly liable to change!
• Accessing device camera from JavaScript - Labs build of Opera/ Android that implements HTML5 getUserMedia with bonus link to the Magic HTML5 Moustache demo

After an evening hacking, Scott Wilson put together a webVTT generator W3C Widget. Download it, double click to install (on a system with Opera Desktop or similar Widget manager and run-time installed). Point it at a video, then simply pause the video after a "screenful" of dialogue, enter that subtitle, unpause, rinse and repeat, then hit the VTT tab and copy and paste your VTT file.