{"id":8659,"date":"2009-12-09T04:14:11","date_gmt":"2009-12-09T09:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/?p=8659"},"modified":"2009-12-09T04:22:59","modified_gmt":"2009-12-09T09:22:59","slug":"google-and-youtube-leading-the-way-for-internet-captioning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2009\/12\/09\/google-and-youtube-leading-the-way-for-internet-captioning\/","title":{"rendered":"Google and YouTube: Leading the Way for Internet Captioning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google and YouTube: Leading the Way for Internet Captioning<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Cheryl Heppner<\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n

Today was my day to learn cool and exciting new stuff. I went with Debbie
\nJones, NVRC’s Technology Specialist to a special event by Google and YouTube
\nat which they would be making an announcement. The invitation had hints it
\nwould be something important to do with accessibility. YouTube is all about
\nvideo so immediately I wondered if they’d had a breakthrough with captioning. How
\ncould I stay away?<\/p>\n

I arrived at the Google office on New York Avenue in DC and got a hug from
\nVint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, while I was fresh off the
\nelevator, followed another just moments later from his wife Sigrid. The
\nGoogle folks were easy to pick out. They had black tees with a fingerspelled
\nGoogle, each letter in a different color.<\/p>\n

In the meeting room I found Debbie and lots of fellow advocates – Nancy
\nBloch, Brenda Battat, David Nelson, Shane Feldman, Cindy King, Lise Hamlin,
\nBob Davila, Tom Wlodkowski, Rosaline Crawford, Jenifer Simpson and so many
\nmore.<\/p>\n

Introduction by Jonas Klink<\/p>\n

We all settled in our chairs to hear Jonas Klink, the Accessibility Product
\nManager at Google start things up by introducing Vint as a critical element
\nfor his unwavering support of an accessible Internet. Vint took the stage
\nand spoke of Google’s goal to organize the world’s information and make it
\nuniversally accessible for everyone. He said that access was personally
\nimportant to him as both he and Sigrid have hearing loss, and joked that
\nSigrid hears so well now with her two cochlear implants that he had to buy a
\nbigger house so she could have bigger parties.<\/p>\n

Background Information from Vint Cerf<\/p>\n

YouTube has shown that there is an extraordinary desire by the world’s
\npopulation to express itself through video. Over 20 hours of video are
\nuploaded each minute to YouTube. It has become a powerful medium of personal
\nexpression and an equally powerful medium of political expression, giving an
\nindividual the ability to tell the rest of the world what is happening. But
\naccessing You Tube has also posed a huge challenge for individuals who are
\ndeaf or hard of hearing as well as individuals who are blind or visually
\nimpaired.<\/p>\n

Google has a history of coming up with new ideas and then putting out a
\nproduct for beta testing to see what people will do with it. The company is
\nconstantly seeking all kinds of ways to help people find information, and
\nmaking that information internationally available and usable.<\/p>\n

Vint showed a chart with data about the languages most used by people on the
\nInternet. In the top spot was English, followed by Chinese. But the chart
\nalso noted the number of people with disabilities, including the large
\nnumber of people who are deaf, blind, have poor vision, and limited
\ndexterity.<\/p>\n

In trying to improve accessibility, Google Apps has been focusing on
\nkeyboard access. Google’s Android was released as open source to encourage
\ndevelopers to add functionality. Its Chrome browser is also an open
\nplatform.<\/p>\n

“Google is fully prepared to pursue accessible features in all its products
\nand services,” Vint said.<\/p>\n

Ken Harrenstien Introduces Captioning Features<\/p>\n

Vint Cerf introduced Ken Harrenstein, and engineer who is deaf, who worked
\nwith him on DeafNet, an early attempt to bring the Internet to people who
\nare deaf. He called Ken the strongest proponent and technical contributor to
\naccess initiatives who is passionate about this work.<\/p>\n

Ken, who gave his presentation in sign language, talked of his frustration
\nduring the many years he has pursued the goal of access to the Internet. He
\nreviewed what is already available, beginning with YouTube, where videos can
\ndisplay captions and subtitles. There are options to increase or decrease
\nthe size of the captions and also to add or remove the panel behind the
\ncaptions.<\/p>\n

Next Ken demonstrated the ability to change the captions to another of the
\n51 different languages that YouTube supports. This translation feature is
\nstill in beta testing but I enjoyed making use of my rusty French when he
\nselected that. He demonstrated Japanese as well.<\/p>\n

Hidden Treasure in Captioning<\/p>\n

For a great incentive for anyone to use captioning, nothing beats the fact
\nthat the text makes a video instantly searchable. To show the power this
\nbrings to the Internet, Ken did a search for “one small step for man” on You
\nTube, and from among the options he chose a captioned video of the famous
\nwalk on the moon.<\/p>\n

Since their launch for the first time in 2008, the growth in captions on
\nYouTube has surprised and pleased Ken. He said there are now hundreds of
\nthousands of captioned videos. I did a lazy woman’s search to check this
\nout, going to YouTube.com, entering the word “captions” in the search box
\nand clicking to see the result. Holy cow! There were 20 pages of results
\nwith a total of about 32,300.<\/p>\n

Challenges Remain<\/p>\n

There are still some hurdles before captions can begin to be commonplace on
\nthe Internet. Ken did a nice job of sidestepping the geek talk to help us
\nvisualize the Internet as a bunch of pipes that water runs through with
\n20-23 hours’ worth of videos being uploaded each minute. Then he showed a
\nphoto of Niagara falls to demonstrate how only a small amount of those hours
\nare captioned. “Who’s going to bottle that water?” he asked.<\/p>\n

And then he answered. This Google\/YouTube event celebrated the launch of
\nspeech recognition and YouTube to make captioning widespread. Thirteen
\neducational partners have joined forces for an early launch. Among the
\npartners are University of California at Berkeley and at LA, Columbia
\nUniversity, Duke, MIT, Stanford, Yale, and University of New South Wales.
\nGoogle will add more partners as quickly as they can.<\/p>\n

You can see Ken in his black Google tee shirt at the beginning of a year-old
\nvideo “YouTube Captions and Subtitles”: http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/t\/captions_about<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NVRC Note:
\nThis morning we heard from several people who were listening to news on the
\nradio. The Google\/YouTube event was covered by WAMU and NPR, and it included
\nmention of NVRC. You can click on the link below to hear the audio and read
\nthe transcript of some WAMU coverage.<\/p>\n

Despite New Technology, Internet Accessibility Lags for Deaf and Hard of
\nHearing (http:\/\/wamu.org\/news\/09\/11\/20.php<\/a>) Source: wamu.org<\/p>\n

November 20, 2009 – By Sabri Ben-Achour<\/p>\n

~~~~~<\/p>\n

(c)2009 by Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing
\nPersons (NVRC), 3951 Pender Drive, Suite 130, Fairfax, VA 22030;
\nwww.nvrc.org<\/a>. 703-352-9055 V, 703-352-9056 TTY, 703-352-9058 Fax. You do not
\nneed permission to share this information, but please be sure to credit NVRC.<\/p>\n

For the official scoop from the Official Google Blog: http:\/\/googleblog.blogspot.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google and YouTube: Leading the Way for Internet Captioning By Cheryl Heppner ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Today was my day to learn cool and exciting new stuff. I went with Debbie Jones, NVRC’s Technology Specialist to a special event by Google and YouTube…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[2326,308,65,1069,2328,2327,2085,1189,2325,2087,2322,2323,2321,330,2324,2320,2071],"class_list":["post-8659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deaf-news","tag-accessibility","tag-caption","tag-captioning","tag-cc","tag-cheryl-heppner","tag-debbie-jones","tag-google","tag-internet","tag-jonas-klink","tag-ken-harrenstien","tag-northern-virginia-resource-center-for-deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-persons","tag-npr","tag-nvrc","tag-subtitle","tag-vint-cerf","tag-wamu","tag-youtube"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p752R-2fF","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2323,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2007\/10\/04\/aol-google-microsoft-yahoo-unite-to-advance-online-media-captioning\/","url_meta":{"origin":8659,"position":0},"title":"AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! 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Click on this link for more information: Link: http:\/\/ct.cnet-ssa.cnet.com\/clicks?t=41511697-763b8ad20c6ba56d1490262f07eb5bbe-bf&s=5&fs=0 Ah, the irony! The video with the announcement is not captioned. I asked one of my staff,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":487,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2006\/09\/27\/closed-captioning-hits-google-video\/","url_meta":{"origin":8659,"position":2},"title":"Closed Captioning Hits Google Video","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"September 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"September 19, 2006 Closed Captioning Hits Google Video By Nicholas Carlson Google has begun providing closed captions for selected videos in its Google Video database, internetnews.com has learned. The service went live last night, a Google spokesperson confirmed. 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To address a clear need, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14425,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2011\/05\/18\/updated-tdi-conference-2011-austin\/","url_meta":{"origin":8659,"position":4},"title":"UPDATED: TDI Conference 2011 – Austin","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"May 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"TDI 19th Biennial International Conference \u00a0**UPDATED** Join us in Austin June 2-4, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency Austin FREE KEYNOTE SPEECHES OPEN TO PUBLIC NEW TDI CONFERENCE VLOGS IN ASL WITH VOICE-OVER AND CAPTIONS FREE KEYNOTE SPEECHES OPEN TO PUBLIC TDI is pleased to announce that all keynote sessions and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":519,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2006\/10\/03\/selected-fcc-exemption-requests-faith-based-organizations\/","url_meta":{"origin":8659,"position":5},"title":"Selected FCC Exemption Requests – Faith-Based Organizations","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"October 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Selected FCC Exemption Requests (Compiled by Cheryl Heppner 10\/1\/06) Below are summaries of five requests by faith-based organizations who wanted their TV programs to be exempt from captioning. 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