This is how the Web gets Regulated - A List Apart
In the latest issue of A List Apart, the online Web design magazine, author Joe Clark writes about how governments are trying to regulate that online videos need to have closed captioning for the disabled.
Basic web accessibility is a known commodity now. Web applications can almost be made accessible; eventually web application accessibility will also be a known commodity, too. Those are clear wins.
But nearly ten years after specifications first required it, online captioning still pretty much does not exist. That’s probably going to change, and the way it’s going to change is by government regulation.
Does that strike you as unthinkable? Do you view the web as a libertarian place where old-media laws barely apply, if at all? Well, prepare for a shock. Legislation is probably coming. And not only should you let it happen, you should get behind it—but only if it’s done using open standards.
Now making the Web more accessable to everyone is great and it should happen, but to legistlate that videos that are posted by Joe Shmo and Jane Doe, two high school students, should legally be closed captioned is crazy. I understand the overall concept and I do think that productions like the kind at Revision3.com should be required to have closed captioning. But to make those people who are just uploading video to share with the masses but are largely unedited and roughly made to caption their videos is crazy, in my opinion.
Now I don’t want to sound not sympathetic to those who are disabled but there is a limit to everything. Now I’m all for standards and those who do captioning should be held to them, but I just don’t think that those who are only uploading for fun and not for profit should be subjected to these new rules. What should happen is that services like youTube develop a way to do the captioning automatically and accurately. We’ll see if that ever happens.
One thing is for certain it’ll be interesting to see what the outcome to this will be.
What are your thoughts? Post them in the comments.
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