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The Future of Video Player Accessibility
www.3playmedia.com
twitter: @3playmedia
#videoa11y
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Eric Boyd
JW Player
Matthew Schweitz
Google/YouTube
Steve Heffernan
Video.js
Greg Kraus
NC State University
Terrill Thompson
Able Player
Lily Bond
3Play Media
Vladimir Vuskovic
Google/YouTube
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UPCOMING WEBINARS
Register: www.3playmedia.com/webinars/
Creating Accessible PDFs with Acrobat (4/30)
Quick Start to Captioning (5/7)
10 Tips for Creating Accessible Web Content with WCAG 2.0 (5/21)
CVAA Legal Requirements for Video Programming (5/27)
DIY Workflows for Captioning and Transcription (7/23)
Contact us at [email protected] with any questions
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OLC Video Tools Workshops
Special discounts available for OLC Members!http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/join/
July 22 – 24 - Exploring Interactive Video Tools– 3 Day Workshop
August 14 – 21 - Intro to Audio and Video Tools
http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/learn/workshops
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Greg Kraus
University IT Accessibility Coordinator
North Carolina State University
Twitter: @gdkraus
[email protected]
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Agenda
1. Introduction
2. VideoJS
3. YouTube
4. JW Player
5. AblePlayer
6. Q&A
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What do we mean by “Video Player
Accessibility?”
• Captions? – Yes
• Does the player require using a mouse?
• Can it be controlled with voice recognition software?
• Can it support audio descriptions (described video)?
• Does it support a sign language track?
• Do the player controls have sufficient color contrast?
• Can the user customize the player?
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This is not an endorsement…
• … and it is not an exhaustive list
• This is a conversation with several developers in the field
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Other Video Players with Accessibility
Support
• Kaltura
• Mediasite
• BBC iPlayer
• PayPal
• OzPlayer
• Acorn Player
• …and more
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What we hope to accomplish today
• Have a conversation about
– How the developers approach accessibility
– Challenges they face
– What direction they are going in the future
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Steve HeffernanVideo.js Project Lead,
Engineer at Brightcove
Twitter: @heff
videojs.com
github.com/videojs/video.js
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Companies Using Video.js
(Coming Soon - all Brightcove
Video Cloud customers)
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Community
13
150+ Contributors
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Contributing Accessibility Experts
• Greg Kraus - NC State University
• Owen Edwards - YouDescribe.org
• Karl Groves - Tenon.io
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Captions
• First to support WebVTT
• Recently switched to browser’s built-in captions
• Using Mozilla’s VTT.js for everywhere else
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Accessible Controls
• Always HTML (no Flash)
• Keyboard Accessible
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Challenge: Extensibility vs Accessibility
• Divs vs Buttons
• Tab order
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DIV vs BUTTON
<div role=“button”>Play</div>
<button>Play</button>
Video.js with <button> in Foundation Framework
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Future Work
• Switch to buttons
• Fix tab order
• Improve focus styles
• Audio descriptions
• WCAG 2.0 Compliance
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Steve HeffernanVideo.js Project Lead,
Engineer at Brightcove
Twitter: @heff
videojs.com
github.com/videojs/video.js
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Accessibility @ YouTube
Matthew Schweitz, Eng manager Vladimir Vuskovic, Product manager
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Overview: ■ Approaching a11y at YouTube
■ What’s been done?
■ What’s next?
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Approaching a11y
Step 1: Get buy-in from the org
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Approaching a11y
Step 1: Get buy-in from the org
Step 2: There is no Step 2
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Approaching a11y
“Organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.”
“Empower the world to create, broadcast, and
share.”
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Approaching a11y
“Organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.”
“Empower the world to create, broadcast, and
share.”
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Approaching a11y
Step 1: Get buy-in from the org
Step 2: There is no Step 2
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Approaching a11y
Step 1: Get buy-in from the org
a11y is a dimension of overall product
quality
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Approaching a11y
Step 1: Get buy-in from the org
Step 2: Test, measure, and integrate means
to improve product quality
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Approaching a11y
● Education & QA
● Track progress
● Add to critical path to release
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
What’s been done...
In practice, start with the basics.
● Semantic markup & sensible DOM
● Attention to contrast
● Tab indexes & roles
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Tab indexes & roles
● Hand crafted is better than automatic
● Shared indexes work
● Use aria-owns
● Labels are cheap
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Recent improvements
● Tab order for player
● Seek slider
● Settings menu in player
● Share panel
● “Skip ad”
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Recent improvements
Global label to announce new things
Use JS to populate and deal with browser
quirks.
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Player & Captioning
There are two parts to it:
● Viewer experience
● Ensuring high quality and quantity of
captioned videos
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Player & Captioning:
viewer preferences● It is a core part of the player
● Users can customize the behavior and the look and feel
across platforms
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Creating captions
Creator tools Crowdsourced Autogenerated
Scale
Quality
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Fans subtitlesQuantity
● Coverage (videos with
captions)
● Languages per video
Quality
● Fix errors
● Replace (or improve) auto-
captions
Challenges
● Quality control
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
What’s next?
● Wide release of crowdsourced caps
● More refinements in site and embed a11y
● Keyboard shortcuts: discoverability
● Attention on mobile
● Investment in ASR improvements for caps
● Surfacing of audio descriptions
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Google Confidential and Proprietary
Thank you!
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JW Player Vision:
Provide the best possible viewing experience across all devices -
desktop, mobile and connected TVs.
Overview
Eric Boyd
Director of Product
1) Working closely with developers
2) User experience studies
3) Keeping up with market changes
4) Contributing to evolving standards
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Founded: 2008
Employees: 95
Headquarters: New York City
Business model: Freemium / SaaS
Financing: Raised $25 million
We are the world’s most popular video player
Who is JW Player?
17Billion
videos
watched
>1Billion
unique
viewers
>1Million
unique
domains
Monthly as of December 2014 for JW Player v6 and above
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50%
JW Player Customer Segments
➔ Media Publishers
➔ OTT Broadcasters
➔ Creative Agencies
➔ Development Studios
➔ Advertising Networks
➔ Syndication Networks
25%
25%
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Keyboard Control
• Tab-in / Tab-out Model
The player consists of a single
element that can be tabbed into.
Elements are not exposed to a
screen-reader.
• Once the player has focus – a
viewer can control with Keyboard
shortcuts.
Play/Pause, Seek, Volume,
fullscreen
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Multiple Audio Renditions
• Supported in HLS
API available to provide custom
controls to change tracks.
• Player will pick based off of
system language settings.
No standard language code for
descriptions.
• Viewer can toggle seamlessly
during playback.
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Closed Captions
• Support caption standards across Flash and
HTML5
• Back-fills where not supported
WebVTT, 608
• Transcripts can be implemented via API.
• Viewer can style captions.
Publisher must provide this to them
Gaps:
• Missing support for WebVTT regions as well as
708 positioning.
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• 3rd Party application on publisher websites
Live on 2.5 million domains
No control of tab-index or placement of player.
• Must support market leading browsers as well as outdated ones
Some vendors are slower to upgrade to standards so JW Player back-fills
• Lack of video specific interaction accessibility standards
• Have to support multiple rendering modes
75% of all video plays are still rendered through Flash
• Scheduling support for latest government mandated support.
• Some media formats are better than others – and those are not
supported everywhere.
Challenges
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JW Player Roadmap
• Add support for 708/WebVTT regions for caption placement
• Explore better keyboard control options.
Video quality, caption selection, audio track selection
• Moving away from Flash as a primary video player to reduce complexity
Single way of interacting with player
• Easier player skinning with CSS
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Summary
• Captions on all devices.
• Limited keyboard control – still relies on mouse for advanced interactions.
• Extensible JavaScript API for publishers to extend the player.
• Multiple audio tracks supported in HLS and MPEG-DASH coming soon.
• Custom coloring can be provided and designed by Publisher.
• Custom controls can be provided by publisher.
• No sign language track support.
• No built in voice recognition controls.
Feedback is always welcome to [email protected] or twitter @jwplayer.
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Able PlayerTerrill Thompson
Technology Accessibility SpecialistUniversity of Washington
[email protected] @terrillthompson
http://ableplayer.github.com/ableplayer
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DO-IT Video website
http://uw.edu/doit/video
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Able Player's Unique Features
• Supports WebVTT audio description
• Supports audio description as a separate, associated video via data-desc-src
• Sign language support via data-sign-src
• Interactive transcript assembled from WebVTT files (captions, subtitles & descriptions)
• Interactive transcript is keyboard accessible
• Support for WebVTT chapters
• Adjustable playback rate
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Extensive testing of <button>
• JAWS + Firefox
• JAWS + IE
• NVDA + Firefox
• Window-Eyes 9 + IE
• VoiceOver + Safari (Mac OS X & iOS)
• Talkback + Chrome (Android)
• http://tinyurl.com/button-a11y
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Q&A
Eric Boyd
JW Player
Matthew Schweitz
Google/YouTube
Steve Heffernan
Video.js
Greg Kraus
NC State University
Contact us at [email protected]
with any questions
Terrill Thompson
Able Player
Vladimir Vuskovic
Google/YouTube
www.3playmedia.com
twitter: @3playmedia
#videoa11y