[whatwg] <video><overlay> for captions/subtitles/etc

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

Philip,

It's great to see further specifications come up around captions. I do
think we need these to make progress and come to a specification that
we can all agree on.

I just wanted to add a comment on your wiki page for clarification:

My <itext> wasn't supposed to stay a JavaScript implementation. In
fact, it had the exact same purpose as your <ovelay> proposal: to
eventually be added into the HTML5 specification and be properly
integrated, such that it didn't have to rely on the timeupdate.
In fact, the <itextlist>/<itext> proposal, which was my second
improvement, see
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility/HTML5_captions_v2, doesn't look
very different to what you have there.

I think you've taken the next step with proposing to add a wrapping
<div> into the DOM - something I wasn't quite sure would be possible
and I'm glad you've taken the step.

Another comment on naming: whether we name the elements <itextlist>
and <itext> or alternatively <overlay> and <source>, I'm not too
fussed. In fact, I've discussed the renaming/reuse of <source> for
<itext> in my recent blog post at
http://blog.gingertech.net/2009/11/25/manifests-exposing-structure-of-a-composite-media-resource/
. I think it may well make a lot of sense since we can reduce the key
required attributes to the ones that already exist for the <source>
element.

I am a little hesitant about the user of "overlay": it is a name that
implies a visual representation. I don't think we should prescribe how
the <div> needs to be represented. In fact, for a textual audio
description, I would prefer not to have a screen display and only have
the screen reader aria-live activated. That is not a overlay any
longer. I think in the past HTML has tried to separate structure from
presentation where possible, with CSS being in control of presentation
issues.

Anyway - I am sorry I haven't had the time to reply properly to the
discussion in the W3C HTML accessibility taskforce yet - I promise
I'll get to it.

Incidentally, I think the W3C HTML accessibility taskforce has
developed into something of a discussion centre for these captions
issues. If you're a HTML5 member, you might want to join the taskforce
and subscribe to http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-a11y/
. Otherwise, I guess, we'll end up duplicating all the discussion
there here again.

Cheers,
Silvia.


On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 1:44 AM, Philip Jägenstedt <philipj at opera.com> wrote:
> As part of the work in the W3C HTML Accessibility Task Force I have proposed
> a new <overlay> element to handle several use cases which are currently not
> solved by HTML5 <video>.
>
> http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Video_Overlay
>
> Certainly we shouldn't be adding this to HTML5 at this point, but I think
> HTML6 and beyond is something the WHATWG should be involved with.
>
> --
> Philip Jägenstedt
> Core Developer
> Opera Software
>