[whatwg] Thoughts on video accessibility

[Martin Atkins]

Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
> 
> I'm interested to hear people's opinions on these ideas. I agree with
> Ralph and think having a simple, explicit mechanism at the html level
> is worthwhile - and very open and explicit to a web author. Having a
> redirection through a ROE-type file on the server is more opaque, but
> maybe more consistent with existing similar approaches as taken by
> RealNetworks in rm files and WindowsMedia files in asx files.
> 

This (having a separate document that references other streams) is what 
I was thinking of. I guess which is more natural depends on who is doing 
the assembling. If it is the HTML author that takes the individual 
pieces and links them together then doing it in the HTML is probably 
easiest.

My concern is that if the only thing linking the various streams 
together is the HTML document then the streams are less useful outside 
of a web browser context. If there is a separate resource containing the 
description of how to assemble the result from multiple resources then 
this resource will be useful to non-browser video playback clients. If 
an existing format is used then it can be linked to as fallback for 
users of downlevel browsers and will hopefully open in a standalone 
video player. If the only linking information is in the HTML document 
then the best you can do as fallback is link to the video stream, 
requiring the user to go find the text streams and load them manually.