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My name is Jason Stark, I'm director of the Described and Captioned Media Program. We're
thrilled to be hosting this webinar for the Video Description Research and Development
Center. I want to take just a moment to go over a few items. This webinar is the fourth
and final in the webinar series. Archived versions of the previous sessions are available
at webinars.dcmp.org, the same page used to register. Questions can be submitted at any
time by typing them into the webinar chat box. You may also email your questions to
webinar@dcmp.org. After the webinar you'll recieve a link to a survey, we welcome your
feedback. CEU credit is available for participation in this webinar, a question on the feedback
form asks if you're interested in this credit. Once this form is submitted, and your attendance
is verified, a certificate will be emailed. And now, I'd like to introduce Dr. Josh Miele,
director of the Video Description Research and Development Center.
>> Welcome everyone to the fourth video description webinar.
Today we're talking about going pro with YouDescribe. We're delighted to be broadcasting from San
Francisco Lighthouse has San Francisco, have done incredible job of getting technical and
practical details arranged for us to be here with you today.
I would also like to of course thank the describing captioned media program who assisted -- who
is the host at the other end of our broadcast making sure that our feed gets out to the
world and handling all sorts of incredible logistics for our webinar.
Jason, can you hear me? Can you hear me?
All right. We're still trying to get some of the feeds
ironed out but that will work out by the time we are ready to roll.
I want to tell you what we're -- first of all I'm the director of the video description
research and development center at Smith Kettlewell we are the developers of YouDescribe as well
as number of other technologies and research projects that have been taking place over
the last couple of years with the support of many partners and the financial support
of the department of education and office of special education programs.
So we are very happy to have been able to do this work with these partners.
One of the most important things that we've been able to produce is this program, this
website called YouDescribe which allows anybody anywhere to describe any YouTube video and
share that audio description with the world. What we're going to be talking about today
--
with us we have number of very exciting and knowledgeable guests. We have Greg Kehret
director of accessible services from the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and visually
impaired where we're being hosted, thank you very much, Greg, welcome.
We also have Rick Boggs the executive director of Audio Eyes which is an accessible media
company down in Los Angeles. Rick's company is well-known for its work in audio description,
captioning and other types of accessible media and media production, welcome, Rick.
>> Thanks. >> Thanks for being here.
On my left is Lucy Greco the web accessibility analyst for university of California Berkeley,
very large university here in the bay area and Lucy has responsible for making sure that
web services and related materials are accessible for the students and employees at UC Berkeley,
welcome, Lucy. Also on the line I believe I have with me
Ryan Honey, can you hear me? >> I can, yes.
>> From the Braille Institute. He is director of -- I lost my notes here. Development director
and also Nancy, I'm going to ask to you pronounce your last name for me.
Nancy is the assistant vice president of national programs and they have been using YouDescribe
at the Braille Institute in Los Angeles to make a bunch of their media accessible using
YouDescribe. Thank you all very much for being here. Jason, can you hear me. Jason at DCMP.
>> I can. >> Glad that's working now. Jason, I wanted
to give you a minute to say a piece about that.
>> Absolutely. Had prerecorded at the introduction there we'll rehash that. Just wanted to second
your welcome to all the participants and we do have captioning in English provided by
caption max and caption in Spanish as well as Spanish translation provided by -- those
buttons are available via the player window. Questions can be submitted via the chat box
or e-mail to webinars @dcmp.org. We'll send an e-mail. Availability of CEU credit if you're
interested in that CEU credit need to fill out the survey and once we confirm your attendance
at the event we will e-mail the certificate. Looking forward to it.
>> Excellent. Jason will also be voicing for us the audience questions, we'll pause periodically
in our discussion for webinar participant questions. Jason will be voicing those for
us as we -- when we come to that section. To begin I'd like to give you a quick video
presentation that was developed by DCMP in collaboration with the Smith Kettlewell research
and development center, explaining what you describe, one-minute video it's available
on YouTube and YouDescribe so please can we roll that?
>> For the first time anyone can add description to any YouTube video. The process is easy.
Simply register for a free YouDescribe account, choose any YouTube video, and start recording
description with your own computer and microphone. Once the video has been described, it can
be watched on YouDescribe.org, shared with others via social networks or e-mail and can
even be embedded in your own website start using YouDescribe now. At YouDescribe.org
or watch informational webinar describing the process in detail at webinar.dcmp.org.
Funding provided by the U.S. Department of Education, grant number H327j 110005.
>> Awesome. Thank you very much. Anybody who is watching this who would like to share a
quick tidbit about what YouDescribe is with your colleagues or anything, that video is
a great place to point them to start out, again you can find it on VDRDC YouTube channel
and on YouTube. One of our most valued collaborators and YouDescribe
supporters, who is a teacher of the visually impaired and Phd student at UC Berkeley and
San Francisco state university, came down with a horrendous flu yesterday. And she called
me this morning wanted to be brought in by phone. She sounded like she should not be
on the webinar she should be headed to the hospital. I told her that we would get along
fine without her but we send her good wishes. I want to try to cover some of the material
I would have discussed with Ting. Ting recorded a number of descriptions using YouDescribe,
by the way YouDescribe as video mentioned at YouDescribe @org anybody can go watch.
You don't need to register in order to watch the videos and listen to the description.
But if you want to create a description you do need to register so that your describer
name can be associated with that description. It's extremely easy. All you need to do, this
is by the way, described in several prior DCMP webinars that you can get to at webinars.dcmp.org.
The process is very simple you to go YouDescribe, log win your credentials that you can get
from the website. And you watch any YouTube video you want. While you're watching that
video you can pause it and record a description. Then when you're done recording that description
you resume playing the video and when you want to insert another description you pause
it again and record another description. You can do that until you're done. Those descriptions
then are uploaded to our website and anyone who watches that video through YouDescribe
will then hear not only the audio of the -- able to watch the YouTube video but also when it
gets to the places where you recorded your description it will pause the video, play
your description and resume the video. It will -- it does it very nicely without a lot
of extra time. It turns out that this is a very nice way,
especially for people who don't have a lot of experience doing recording description
to be able to do this. Because traditional description requires very careful timing,
very careful editing and a lot of precision. This allows you to be a little bit less precise
about how you record your description but to be able to provide the descriptions share
them with everyone nevertheless. I want to point out by the way that YouDescribe does
not copy the YouTube video. It doesn't change the YouTube video in any way.
All it does is stream the YouTube video to your desktop but it pauses it when it wants
to play pieces of the description. All we're doing is synchronizing this new descriptive
information along with the original YouTube video. It's non-invasive
I want to of course, point out that there are many resources on YouDescribe. There's
support link on the website where you can certainly get an enormous amount of additional
information how to describe what types of things to say. What types of things not to
say. What sorts of descriptions blind viewers will find useful for different types of videos.
Whether it's an academy video or kitten video there are guidelines and suggestions about
how to record an effective set of description. One of the things that I will suggest is that
when you're recording a description you watch it a couple of times, when you watch the video,
a couple of times before starting to record. So that you know pretty much what you want
to say and when you want to say it. A little bit of preparation goes a long way
in creating audio description. Even for amateurs. I want to introduce some of our panelists,
I want to talk to some of our panelists then start with Greg Kehret, director of accessible
information services at the San Francisco Lighthouse for the blind and visually impaired.
Where we are broadcasting from today. We're really lucky to have Greg. Greg, can you tell
us a little bit about what kind of accessible information your department deals with, what
types of accessible media services does the Lighthouse provide?
>> There we go. The cornerstone of our operation has been Braille translation, transcription
services. English and Spanish Braille we've been doing that for decades. Along with that
audio transcription, meaning audio recordings, English and foreign language. Probably our
specialty if we have a niche it's that we've been taking other types of visually conveyed
information, turning them in to tactile graphics and particularly focusing on maps and the
like. We've been working on some of the bay area transit system, accessible BART map.
Accessible Muni map project. We've been doing some national park land as well as college
campuses, things of that nature. Some amusement and theme parks that are very popular in this
country that I can't name because it's contractual obligations. And other things that don't fit
in -- we do some user testing and accessible testing of websites and software and things
of that nature. >> Has your department done any work in the
past with audio description and if it has, or hasn't I'm curious about sort of what -- why
that hasn't been part of your accessible services before.
>> Greg: We've done a little bit off and on, audio description. We're a small staff, by
the way, sometimes we are augmented by volunteers who help and unfortunately traditionally what
applying description to video has entailed, it's a little higher tech than what we normally
do, the software is more demanding to learn. I actually would like nothing better than
to geek out in the studio all day do pre- and post production, I have a lot of other
stuff to do. And the learning curve is such that we haven't really been able to train
volunteers effectively to do that. There's a lot of churn amongst volunteers. Once you
invest a lot of time and forgetting them up to speed then there is some timing then off
to the next thing. Then fortunately I've noticed that people
would have aptitude to do this, in professional life oftentimes that's not the kind of volunteer
opportunity they're looking for. They don't want to do what they do professionally for
volunteering, they want to do something else. >> Josh: Sounds like technical barriers have
been a big factor. How do you see the availability of YouDescribe this sort of simple web-based
tool for adding all your description to YouTube videos, is that -- how do you see that fitting
to the services that your department provides at the Lighthouse?
. >> Greg: It fits brilliantly because, video-based
especially distributed on YouTube and the like it's ubiquitous now. Every business entity,
individuals, everybody is publishing video. And the particular system that you developed,
it's so easy to use, there really is no learning curve. Which means that for those like myself
and people I work with who are pressed for time and don't have a lot of time to throw
at the project like this, we can do it quickly and as far as getting volunteers on board.
The training really just becomes writing the content, learn can how to describe effectively.
>> Josh: This is possibly one more item that the Lighthouse can add to its menu of fee
for service option, is that it can offer to the community of the -- the business community
and the blind community. >> Greg: Absolutely.
>> Jason. Thank you very much, Greg, I know that you
said you might have to make an early escape but I really appreciate you making the time
and I appreciate the Lighthouse hosting us here today.
My next guest, Rick Boggs, is the executive director of Audio Eyes, which is an accessible
media company in L.A., thank you so much for coming up and joining us here today. You've
been in the business of audio description, you're one of very few blind professionals
in the business of audio description, you've been doing it for well over a decade and you
have enormous amount of experience both creating and consuming audio description.
I'm just wondering, how do you see a tool like YouDescribe changing the landscape of
-- how description works? >> Rick: I love the question. Because it establishes
two things that I know to be true. It is a tool and valuable tool. And it does change
the landscape. There's no question about it. You know, it's a small community in this country
of professional audio describers. It takes -- part of the reason so much effort to become
proficient you learn how to do it then if you're doing professional description for
variety of purposes. It's a small community. I think a tool like this where anybody, my
brother, my sister, my grandmother, my kids, could get on this computer and make a YouTube
video accessible for me. Or maybe somebody pays for it it's never really
going to happen. They're not going to put in the effort. It
leaves me out of the loop of social circle, this kind of a tool addresses a huge problem
of ever increasing divide, digital divide between blind people and sighted people. And
it promotes this use of digital media all the time in classrooms, in work and pleasure
and fun and family sharing things via social media.
It's a ripe opportunity for exclusion for myself. This tool YouDescribe makes it simple,
it makes it accessible, it makes it actually possible. Now it's just an awareness game
of how many people can we spread the news to so that my sister finds some video on YouTube
she finds amusing she's going to share it with the rest of our family but she knows
all I'm going to hear some cat meowing now she can add description to it. She doesn't
have to get any special training, go through some certification process.
I think this kind of a thing can be a little bit of a scary development for professionals
in this field like myself, there's always that, oh, yikes, am I going to become irrelevant
as professional describer. But it doesn't, it has very unique place. It makes possible
the distribution of quantity of description and many things that never would be described
because there's no business model that would ever justify it. They will be described and
they can be described. This can be incorporated in to -- as a tool for even professional description
production company like Audio Eyes. Because when we engage clients that are universities,
sometimes they're groups of universities, educational media publishers, for example,
this is just one possible. Who may have very restrict budget constraints, have a huge quantity
of material that needs to be done or think about this, what about the very specialized,
very highly specific media educational media content like high sciences or math or whatever
where we would be using this extended stop video kind of thing.
Well, if the setting, let's say the university, is using videos that are already on YouTube
or up roading them to YouTube. If it's a YouTube video pool that's being used, YouDescribe
is obvious choice. If further the content is such that you want the extended description,
again, YouTube is really an ultimate choice. Even a company that accustomed to providing
in-line description as far as professional service, when a law school wants a video on
a DVD they want it to be just like the original but with description and professionally made
and timed and precise that's when you do that. When there's a video on YouTube you have to
get it -- a quantity of this done, limit -- this is the tool that solves that problem.
>> Jason. You see the possibility for company, professional company like yours finding productive
way to incorporate YouDescribe. >> Rick: I have a particular college in mind
and a problem that came up where YouDescribe is really the only solution. And we are very
creative at Audio Eyes about, look, I say -- I don't know the exact number, probably
35-40% of our staff are totally blind professionals. We care, we are invested, we want things to
be described. We don't want to say, someone calls us says,
we'd like to get this video described. We never want to say, no, we can't do that because,
one, you don't have a budget, sufficient to do it or for any reason. We don't want to
say no. If someone -- because think about it, most people either don't know what description
is or they're being pushed in to describing their media by some law that they don't like
they feel -- I say most of our customers are hostile they don't want to, they feel they
have to. When you get somebody that wants them to describe something you have to say
yes no matter what. YouDescribe makes that possible.
Think about it as a company if they -- company doesn't have a budget, if the movie is on
YouTube it's a little more investment on our part to get a staff member who is training,
to just get up, log in, do the description, provide it for the client, job done, description
delivered. That's what we're about. We're mission based. Yeah, I absolutely do. Like
I said without going in to specifics about certain situations I do have in mind situations
where even for professional production company YouDescribe is the best solutions.
>> Josh: Recently, professor at UC Berkeley came to me wanted to use YouDescribe as platform
for some final projects for her students where she would assign students to do descriptions,
not necessarily specifically only for access but to do some -- with a little bit of creativity
and analysis perhaps thrown in there, do you -- can you think of any other sort of creative
or interesting possibilities that tool like YouDescribe opens up?
>> Rick: Any type of non-traditional description or something that might not even be called
description because it's the kind of income it's providing, for example, context or background.
I've heard some description from Europe where the description producers decide to try to
inject a lot of background or context for a particular film that they're describing.
In my view, I'd rather have the description of what is on the screen for that entertainment
product. Wouldn't it be cool to have -- that's what YouDescribe does. No one is going to
find a budget to describe something three or four or five different ways. Which they're
providing historical context or context about actors. Think about it some consumers that
watch films, one of our guys on our staff is a film expert and buff, you show him any
film, anybody that's in that film -- even what we would call maybe minor unknown actors,
he'll know what else they have been in, what else they have done, it's his passion, his
interest. You can insert that kind of information, you
have YouDescribe versions where the description includes recognition of these people and their
other practices. Like IMDB..
>> Josh: One of the cool things is it does allow different describers to record different
descriptions for the same video and the user can then choose which of the descriptions
they want to listen to. That's a great point. >> Rick: To finish up the key point to remember
that YouDescribe is a YouTube-based project at this time. That -- let's put it this way,
it's ideal for YouTube videos. Because they are so numerous. Ubiquitous. They're such
a huge content and type of content is all over the map and there's rarely a budget to
do any of it in the more formal traditional way.
Best tool for that and like we just said, it gives -- what a great place to experiment
and see what the people like and what do they find fun.
>> Josh: Thank for being here today. I want to point out that YouDescribe is a demonstration
technology. There's no reason why this type, exact same type of solution can't be applied
to any other online streamed video. We started with a YouTube player that can handle synchronizing
the descriptions but any video player is possible. If there are video platforms that we -- like
Vimio or Netflix or Amazon on demand or any other streamed video, this is a possible solution.
This is one of the ways that that type of video could be made accessible. It's an extremely
-- we're using YouDescribe and YouTube as our starting point but the video description
research and development center sort of coming from perspective that believes this is the
way video description may be delivered in the future. Not necessarily all by amateurs,
but certainly by synchronizing multiple streams by the user and giving the user the control.
Want to take a break here so that we can take some questions from our viewers. I also want
to remind us that coming up in a few minutes we're going to be -- going to be discussing
accessibility with Lucy Greco of UC Berkeley also Ryan honey and other participants from
the Braille Institute in L.A. and how they're using YouDescribe.
I would like to see if there are any questions at this point, Kyle, do we have any questions?
>> Kyle: John Brant asks, does YouDescribe work in concert with closed captioning system
built in to YouTube? >> Josh: Our player is currently not -- we
have not enabled the captions. It is something that we could certainly provide those captions
through -- from YouTube. If YouTube has the captions we would be able to provide them.
Unfortunately the current player is not enabled for captions but that is something that we
will be working on shortly. It's primarily -- there's only -- also working with a limit
set of engineers and it's absolutely one of our priorities and we will enabling captions
soon but not yet. Other questions?
>> Kyle: That's all the questions we have at this time.
>> Josh: I'll also mention if captions are what you want you don't need description you
can go straight to YouTube to get those captions. Kyle, can you remind folks how to submit questions
and that we'll take questions again at the end?
>> Kyle: Absolutely. Questions may be submitted to webinar chat box underneath the video screen.
May also be e-mailed to webinar @dcmp.org. Either those can be used we will voice those
questions. >> Jason.
Thank you so very much. Lucy, welcome. Thank you for being patient. Is your microphone
turned on? >> Thank you for having me.
>> Lucy is the web accessibility analyst for UC Berkeley. UC Berkeley I actually -- full
disclosure I attended UC Berkeley, I'm a proud alumna, having attended UC Berkeley. UC Berkeley
is a very large institution. How many students do you have approximately?
>> Approximately 35,000 students. Split between evenly between grads and undergrads.
>> Josh: Can you tell us about how a big university like UC Berkeley these days using video as
instructional materials for their students. The 35,000 students.
>> Lucy: Instructors are using video -- we've always had the classroom with video technology.
When you think about the fact those of us of a certain age remember going through elementary
school, even going through universities, instructors would show a video. It would be a big process,
they would bring in the big TV set, the VCR they show us the video.
Now that it's simple and easy and they all have laptops in each of the rooms, they're
using video much, much more frequently. Video can be played, they can play six different
videos throughout a lecture to show something that they wouldn't otherwise be able to show.
Chemistry instructor might go to a website to view videos on how to show chemical processes
during their lecture. Or maybe engineering instructor will show videos on how to build
a bridge properly during their lecture and point out different things with video content
in the classroom. And it's something that nowadays we take for
granted that you want to show something just show it on a video.
UC Berkeley also is taking many of our lectures and putting them online. We have a goal to
eventually put all of our classes on YouTube. Those will be available for free to anyone
around the world who actually take a lecture, watch it. You won't get a grade in the class
but you can virtually attend an entire UC Berkeley class online. Many of those classes
have visual content that needs to be described. Which currently is not being described.
>> Josh: That's a great lead in to my next question. How are universities like UC Berkeley
addressing video accessibility for behind students?
>> Lucy: At this point, we're not. We're hiring somebody if a student is taking a class to
sit with them maybe describe the stuff in person. Maybe a professor sitting down with
the student and doing it all manually. A tool like YouDescribe would permit us to
have not only that student get the experience equally to the other students, but then we
have something to add to our archives. Berkeley is addicted to archiving everything we do.
Let's put it that way. We want to have things around for posterity
for years and years to come. We feel it's part of our mission, part of public service
that we offer something, it's going to be available to everyone from here to eternity.
If we had something like YouDescribe and a student right now is a student needs it, we
do it. Somehow or other we're going to find a way to do it for a student. But tool like
YouDescribe will mean that the simplest possible way, professor wants a student who is visually
impaired to watch a video they can go in, they can describe that video for them instantly,
then provide them the link and it's right there. Then that link will last forever for
somebody else to be able to describe it. >> Josh: Do you think that a tool like YouDescribe
will fit in well with the UC Berkeley current approach to accessible instructional material?
>> Lucy: I would dream that it would alleviate some of the burden on the current system,
in that currently it's a small group of people whose responsibility to make sure that students
with disabilities get accommodated. And that it can go back to the creators of content,
back to the professors who are saying to a student, you must watch this video to do it.
But I think YouDescribe is so simple and so easy to use, we sat down with you a few weeks
ago, had a training how to use YouDescribe. And it took three minutes to get -- a person
new to accessibility up and running in the system. That's something that would actually
assist in this modern age of academic institutions that don't have time, don't have money.
I can see a faculty member actually using this. There's so many other tools that are
out there that faculty members won't use that they will throw up their hands in disgust
say, somebody else has to deal with it. I think YouDescribe is simple enough that faculty
would like to do it themselves. >> Josh: That's great. I think it's really
exciting, thank you so much for being here with us, Lucy, for talking to us about how
this is going to fit in with the higher education component.
I want to again check in with our folks on the phone, we have from the institute in institute
we have Ryan and Nancy. Nancy I'm avoiding your last name because I'm afraid of it. Can
you say it for me. >> You're not the first one. Don't worry about
it. >> N-i-e-b-r-u-g-g-e I believe.
>> Ryan, you're there. >> Yes.
>> Jason. Thank you for being here with us. The Braille
Institute has done something really amazing. Basically, I asked to you come because you've
created a bunch of material on YouDescribe, I didn't even know that you were doing it
that all of a sudden I looked on YouDescribe there was a bunch of Braille Institute materials.
It appears that the Braille Institute uses a lot of video for outreach and communication.
Can you talk a little bit about how the Braille Institute uses video in its outreach work.
>> Ryan: Sure. The great thing about YouTube video when you're an organization like ours
given the media explosion in the last decade, you can reach a lot of people for not very
much cost and you can tell your story and get it out there to the audience. We have
a commitment in the last several years working but spent lot of time working together on
portion of the libraries, YouTube library that we now have. Really try to tell our story
get it out there. Videos are one of the most effective ways to get pieces of information
about all the services that we offer. We have a range of services and so short, three to
five videos or even less showing the direct services that we offer, going to be very effective
tool in telling our story. We went all in and started cranking them out.
>> Josh: Have you guys used have you done video description work before in the past?
>> Nancy: A long history of videos. We have done them every year for annual meeting of
board members. And guests and interested parties to -- we've done highlight videos of the bowl
challenge for the last decade. We've actually always had strong communication department
that allowed us to do different types of videos. We've also captured on video, had doctors
come be guest speakers on Braille, that's enabled us to share that information.
We actually have long history of videos. YouDescribe gives us an opportunity to really get just
as good making all are described. That's been a challenge for us in the past.
>> Ryan: We've done some work in the past, which promotes Braille literacy in kids, a
component where the books are described as part of the kit. We send a voice over version
of someone reading the book then voice over description. Then it can be very time consuming.
We dip our toes in to audio describing our videos, but YouDescribe says we're going to
do the video description. >> Josh: I want to apologize to listening
audience the audio from our phone connection is a little bit muddy, I apologize for that.
But it sounds like you guys have a lot of video that you use for communication and outreach
and dissemination of your programs. It sounds like description is an important part of that.
Can you tell me a little bit about how the Braille Institute has started using YouDescribe
to address -- to basically make its YouTube videos more accessible for blind viewers.
>> Ryan: YouDescribe is just -- the perfect tool at the perfect time. About a year ago
I think it was Nancy came to me said, look, we've got this great library of video content
and very little of it is audio described and -- that simply can't be the case. So, we started
looking at ways to get everything described and in lot of cases it wasn't feasible, it
would change -- to try to do it and way the videos have been -- wrap our heads around
it. You introduced me to YouDescribe it really just was the answer. The simple ability to
pause the video and add in the description of whatever kind the describer chooses to
put in, really changed the game. So, we went ahead and had one of our regular
volunteers who has been a part of our team for 20 years, loves working with us, we gave
it to him as a project and he's really run with it. And I could see moving forward recruiting
other volunteers to give different descriptions. Different styles, different takes, because
there's no reason that you couldn't have multiple descriptions of the same video and hear a
slightly different version. >> Josh: You said you used volunteer, what
has your experience been using volunteer labor for a job like this?
We know that volunteers are good at some stuff not always good at other stuff. Was it difficult
to train the volunteer on how to do this? >> Nancy: We were surprised because our volunteer
is used to going on script. In other words, he's used to knowing what to say when we script
him for general voiceover. But YouDescribe he's now making that judgment call of what
needs to be described. And it appears to be very seamless. He's taken this on and I think
based on all the resources that you've put on your website, frequently asked questions,
how to do it, what the techniques are, he's taken that and internalized it doing a very
good job. Certainly see that we've got one person doing
it as we extend this there is going to be room to develop our own best practices on
how to use the tool and what we'd like to see more of. Just coming out of the gate with
very little training instruction he's done a wonderful job.
>> Rick: One of the things for some of your listeners, larger organizations are thinking
about using this one of the advantages to YouDescribe when working with volunteers that
you can really give the volunteer ownership of what they're creating. Obviously have oversight
to make sure that it's appropriate, it's doing the job but one of the things they're not
just reading the script that someone else wrote and coming in recording in, that's it.
It's their voice, their words, it's their user name as describer. Really gives them
ownership of the description, that's a powerful form of engagement for our volunteers.
>> Nancy: Makes them want to do more. >> Josh: One of the plans is tighter integration
with social media like Twitter and Facebook and Google plus so that people can sort of
brag about the description, is that they're creating. That's part of incentivizing people
to create more of it and part of getting the word out thereof what's been done.
>> Rick: I'll share quickly an anecdote. Our describe, Jim Hall, he is put in his personal
website a link to all the videos he describes. A great example, the describer's desire to
promote the work that they're doing. It's on our website as well as his. I think you'll
see more of that, people wanting to share the work that they're doing.
>> Josh: That's extremely cool. I've listened to many of the videos that Jim has created,
descriptions he's created he's doing a great job.
Thank you, Ryan and Nancy for being with us. Stick around, we're going to a little bit
off schedule because Jason says that we have a few questions from the audience. I'd like
to step in take a few audience questions. We'll go to some mor discussion.
>> Josh: I have several here. Coming off when you need to jump back on. Since you are not
hosting the YouTube video, if the content owner disabled embedding of the content will
be available for YouDescribe? >> Josh: It will still be viewable on YouDescribe.
But not embeddable via YouDescribe, I believe. That's a great question. I'm not actually
sure if I have run in to any situations like that. Maybe the person with that question
could send me an e-mail with an example video that is embedded we dock an experiment. We
can correspond about it. I believe that it would still not be embeddable.
>> Next question. Do you anticipate making the recording of description iPad or tablet
compatible? >> Josh: Yes, we do. Vast majority of people
that are consuming video are not sitting at their desk. They are sitting on the bus, or
in a library with their iPad or in their living room on their couch with their other tablet
of their choice. The player that we're currently using is a
flash-based flare. IOS doesn't really play well with it and there are other issues about
poor compatibility with mobile tablets. It is one of our absolute highest priority to
create probably first an IOS version because the demographics support that. There are more
blind people currently using IOS devices. But shortly we're eager to create a solution
that will work for all tablets. The reason why we wouldn't probably be able to create
across platform mobile solution is that it almost definitely needs to be apple based
rather than web app based. I don't want to get too technical, but we would love to make
it a one size fits all solution, but probably we will need to write apps for each platform
that we want to support. That requires engineering resources and it is absolutely our highest
priority. >> Great S. there some type of mentoring network
for non-professional audio describers who may want to get involved?
>> Josh: That is a great question. There are all sorts of description resources and description
communities. You can start on our website on YouDescribe, look at the support links
and frequently asked questions. There are links there to many, many other resources
about description, including discussion forum lists, I don't know of a discussion forum
or e-mail list that specifically supports amateur or professional development of describers,
Rick, do you happen to know of one that would -- good resource for that?
>> Rick: I've been involved in planning of this, but, no, at the moment it isn't available
online. It's coming. >> Josh: Next question.
>> How has YouTube responded if at all and have you thought about having some type of
notice or icon pop up on YouTube site if a video is available via YouDescribe.
>> Josh: A great question. Yes. We have actually created some experimental browser plug ins.
A browser plug is in like a little thing that just sort of -- you install it in your browser
and it will just basically sit there and watch YouTube video links. And check to see if there
is a description available for that link. If there were a description available, it
would let you play either the original link or described version. And it would also allow
you to decide, if you were a registered YouDescribe user to create a description right from there.
If you find a link that YouDescribe -- YouTube video that is not described or that you think
you could do a better job on you could just click a link that would be -- that would pop
up in your browser to create a new description for that video.
The browser plug in is the way to go with that. We will be probably releasing a couple
of different browser plug-ins in the next year.
YouTube, the Google certainly knows about YouDescribe and they think it's cool. We haven't
gotten any official response from them but some of the people at Google who know about
us say that they think it's cool. There is currently no discussion about directly
integrating YouDescribe with YouTube. Although obviously the more accessibility we can build
in to mainstream products the better. That would be excellent solution ultimately.
Other questions? >> Can you talk a little bit about the laws
involved with description, it was my understanding that only Section 508 includes description
and only for federal agencies who are providing training videos.
>> Josh: I don't believe I can address the laws around video but what I can tell you
is that when you're using accessible -- using instructional materials that are video and
they're not accessible to blind students those blind students are not benefiting from those
materials. If they're not described. I'm not sure what the law says but as a blind person
who sat through an awful lot of undescribed video material, I can tell you that it's better
to have it described in almost every circumstance. As far as the law goes, the American Foundation
for the Bind, one of our description leadership network partners has done an awful lot of
work on video description and policy and legislation. I would refer you to the American Foundation
for the Blind, AFB.org for any real policy analysis around video description. Does anybody
on the panel want to address that question? >> Rick: My simple response is, I don't think
your understanding of law the way you state is accurate so if you do a little bit more
research I think you'll find that there's much more legislative support for description
as an accommodation. >> Lucy: It's Lucy here. We find that student
needs description as their accommodation, we have to provide it no matter which way
it is. This will just make it easier for us to do it. We had students taking classes that
required them to watch videos, like I said we've had to hire readers to sit with that
student and describe it for them. If a student is meeting in the classroom there's no question,
just needs to be described. >> Josh: Jason, more questions?
>> We do have couple additional ones here. Can the described video be downloaded when
we send the link of the video to a student, will a student have to log in to a YouDescribe
account to access it? >> Josh: The student does not have to log
in to a YouDescribe account. Anybody can view any of the descriptions without logging in.
But you cannot download the YouTube video or the description currently.
You have to be connected to the Internet. >> Okay, great. Then final two questions I'm
going to combine here. Is it possible to edit the original video description you create
or do you have to start from scratch if you make a mistake?
Then from same individual, do you know if the YouDescribe website is accessible to those
using screen reader as assistive technology. >> l Josh: Great. Yes, you can edit your descriptions.
You can basically -- once you record a description for a video is basically a set of audio clips
that are associated with that video and played at specific time. So you can -- if you decide
you don't like any of those clips you can delete them or rerecord them. And soon we
will be providing tools to enable you to move them around in the video timeline. If you
decide that you came in a little bit too early or a little bit too late you can actually
push it one way or another without re-recording it. Yes, there is editing capabilities.
The website is accessible, I would say it's accessible probably -- I believe it is probably
not compliant with many guidelines that would be -- we haven't looked at its compliance.
But many, many blind people are using it and using the recording tools. We don't -- we
have not done an accessibility evaluation other than just de facto people using it and
able to use all of the functions. Yes, it is functionally accessible. There may be some
technical accessibility problems with it. But I don't think that they would be major.
We are coming to the end of our time. I want to give couple of quick questions to our panelists
maybe just quick around the group. Lucy, what other types of uses, outside of your organization
do you think YouDescribe should be considered for?
Any thoughts about that? I'll ask the same question to everybody.
>> Lucy: I see so many videos being passed around in social media, being passed around
in general. That I've just wanted to know what they're doing. A blind organization I
deal closely with, for example, last year sent out a video to all of the affiliates
of one of their major building being destroyed. It was like a landmark building, the building
was being destroyed, the entire audio track was bulldozers. That's it. Historical moment
they wanted to mark it in time and we couldn't get it. The main people that this organization
deals with, their customer base is all blind. They sent us a video of sound track and bulldozer
as far as I'm concerned. It was disheartening, it was sad, it was generally
sad. Another situation I've been working with in major science publisher who has said that
they produce hundreds of videos on some of their articles that they produce and they
would like these videos described, not for blind people but for everyone. They would
like a tool to be able to describe these scientific articles that have these video snippets, give
the author a tool to actually point out what needs to be seen.
A video is something that a person can consume and what they consume is very individual and
very personalized. Somebody who is producing that video has certain -- has a certain message
they want to get across, description adds another tool for the video author, video director,
whatever you I may want to call them. To get the right message through. I'm showing you
this video not to show you the cute cat sitting on the sofa. But to show you that cats are
smart and though how to get that pillow up so that they can jump up.
>> Josh: Plenty of cute cats out there. >> Lucy: Descriptive is giving people the
opportunity to enhance the message that they're trying to produce with that particular video.
>> Rick Boggs, any thoughts about what YouDescribe might be used for outside of your organization?
>> Rick: I think what I'm really concerned about is the videos that blind youth are missing
out on. Their peers are passing videos, they're making jokes, they're laughing, they think
something is cool. They're learning things, whatever it is that they're doing, digital
media is a part of youth culture now in a way that we've never seen before. And it bothers
me that the blind members of this community are missing out. And so this is a twofold
benefit of YouDescribe. Gives a tool for their peers to describe it. So that the blind peer
can get it, blind youth can hear about it. Second it makes their sighted peers conscious
and more capable and more sort of emotionally educated about their own blind peers.
>> Josh: Thank you, Greg, any thoughts? >> Greg: Within the organization, video is
probably the most effective way for the Lighthouse to advertise our services. Outreach and communication
by social media, outside of the office I think it's just going to be a lot of fun for a lot
of people. What did we all do before YouTube. Everybody at 3:00 a.m. is watching YouTube
videos in the living room. We can all get together describe those, have a hoot doing
them. >> Josh.
Thank you, Greg, Ryan and Nancy. Any thoughts about how YouDescribe might be used outside
of your organization? >> Nancy: One thing that comes to mind is
similar to a university setting, videos are become very embedded in K-12 educational setting.
Kids are getting iTunes, textbooks are digital, refreshable display, describing video in educational
settings seems crucial. Even coming to the testing setting. As Ryan said, it's the right
time. >> Josh: I want to thank all of my participants.
Ryan Honey and Nancy from the Braille Institute in Los Angeles. I want to thank Lucy Greco
from the university of California at Berkeley. Thank you to Rick Boggs, executive director
of Audio Eyes in Los Angeles. Greg Kehret thank you very much and thank you to the San
Francisco Lighthouse for the blind and visually impaired for hosting our webcast. And I want
to thank of course DCMP for supporting us and assisting with all of the logistical issues
that this webinar entails. And thank you to all of our other partners, Caption Max and
Decaptcha for providing accessibility, captioning as well as translation. Of course thank you
to the Department of Education for funding and supporting the work that we do. Thank
you for being part of this webinar. Thank you everyone.
If you want to get in touch with us you can certainly write to us at this webinar will be archived at webinars.dcmp.org.
Thank you all very much. That have a great day.