Accessibility Knowledgebase

Web Accessibility - Adding Captions in Flash!

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Captions benefit more than just those who are deaf or those who are hard of hearing. People working in noisy environments, for example, also need text … plus captioning offers a number of additional benefits to all users that should not be overlooked.

Watch the Captioned Bo Ryan on Partners in Giving Flash Video !

Techniques used to caption the "Bo Ryan in Giving" video :

Started with a Windows Media File and wanted a Flash file, but had to create a QuickTime compatible (MOV) file in order to caption in Magpie, which can output a caption file for Flash, but can't take Flash or Windows Media as an input in order to do the sync.

I depended a lot on the video "How to caption Flash CS3/CS4 content". Launch with Flash Player"

1) Started with a WMV
2) Had to convert to a MOV file using CS4 Media Encoder as Magpie no longer accepts WMV
3a) Used notepad to pre-chop the transcript into caption fragments
3b) Synced with Magpie and exported the DFXP XML file for Flash
4) Had to convert the WMV file to a FLV file as Flash Pro would not read this particular flavor of WMV file. That's OK, as it would have been converted to FLV at some point anyway.
5) Pulled the FLV file in and used the Flash skin built into Flash Pro CS4 that supported CC and all the other controls.
6) Experimented a lot with publish formats and settled on requiring at least Flash player 9 and Actionscript 3.
7) Had to do some tweaks - Adjusted the stage size as it didn't automatically expand to fit the movie. And then when I tried to do an auto adjust it didn't include the controls of the skin, so I had to manually increase the size.
- Made link to FLV relative so that I could move the video's directory around without it breaking.
- Increased the font size by editing the DFXP file directly using Dreamweaver
- Changed the title tag on the HTML file that Flash Pro created

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Authoring Captions for Flash is an excellent overview from NCAM (National Center for Accessible Media, WGBH) covering:

• Choosing an authoring environment,
• Adding captions with MAGpie,
• Styling Captions
• Internal captions via ActionScript, and Caption Display options.

WGBH, Boston's public broadcaster and a decades-long pioneer in developing access solutions to media for audiences with disabilities has created a component for Flash, CC for Flash, that can be authored into any SWF file for playback in Adobe Flash Player. The component is easy to use, and freely available from the NCAM CC for Flash Web site.

Additional Benefits of Captions:

ADA and Section 508 Compliance

- requires captioning for video content.

Searching and Indexing:

- captioning allows content to easily be searchable with traditional text searches because it involves the synchronization of text content with the audio/video material,

Universal Access:

- designing content to be as usable as possible by as many people as possible.

Increased Comprehension:

- captioning improves comprehension for all viewers, especially for those with English as a second language.

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Also see World Caption a free tool for adding captions to a QuickTime compatible video.