[LINK] Fwd: vip-l: Accessibility Review of Dr Who Series Two, DVD Boxed Set - Christmas Option?

[Tom Worthington]

At 09:49 AM 12/21/2006, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>forwarded with permission. I thought the interface description was 
>quite interesting. If any linkers are involved in multimedia items 
>like DVDs, this aspect of accessibility may be of interest.
>
>>Access Review Doctor Who, Series Two DVD Box Set Release ...

Daleks have limited vision and mobility and so need accessibility 
features on their DVDs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek>.  ;-)

I have found DVDs occasionally frustrating, even though I have two 
arms and eyes. Just getting the DVD disk out of the case can be difficult.

DVD menu designers seem to delight in creating visually appealing 
interfaces which are very hard to navigate. They use stills from the 
show with few visual cues as to which item you have selected or 
exactly what it does. But at least with most if you just keep 
pressing "play" the main feature plays.

With one recently I watched for five minutes before realizing I was 
looking at a ten second loop of video repeating over the menu.

>The Royal National Institute of the Blind and the BBC should indeed 
>be very proud of this exciting and highly accessible DVD release! 
>Let's hope it is the first of many, and that other Audio Visual 
>publishers follow their innovative lead.

RNIB <http://www.rnib.org.uk/> are doing some good work, both with 
advocacy and in implementation. The BBC 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/> are doing very innovative 
things with web design and also with VOD 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/onlinesubtitlestrial.shtml> and 
their iPlayer 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/access20/2006/10/not_just_subtitles_bbc_iplayer.shtml>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml