WEBVTT

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Gian: Hi, my name is Gian Wild and I'm the Director of AccessibilityOz.

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We've been operating for two years and today I would like to introduce you

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to the world's first accessible video player, OzPlayer.

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Web accessibility is about making websites and applications accessible to people with disabilities.

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When it comes to online videos, this is about people with deafness, or people

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who are blind or visually impaired, as well as people who have physical disabilities or

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cognitive disabilities. So we developed OzPlayer to address the needs of all people with disabilities.

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We've tested over 100 web sites in the last year and approximately eighty per cent of

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those websites had a video player of some sort. Every single video player that we tested

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was inaccessible in some form. Some contained keyboard traps, others couldn't be operated

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via the keyboard, others allowed some operation via the keyboard but really important features

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like captions and audio descriptions couldn't be activated via the keyboard. There are other

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issues such as videos starting automatically and the lack of audio descriptions and captions.

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So our clients kept asking us what video player they should use and we decided that we had

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to build our own in order to meet this need.

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Some videos contain keyboard traps and this is a known bug of Flash features within Firefox.

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When a video contains a keyboard trap, the user essentially needs to close the browser

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window entirely and start again therefore rendering the content completely inaccessible

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to the user.

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When a video is inaccessible to the keyboard, then users with physical disabilities such

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as Parkinson's disease can't access the video content. We found in a number of video players

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that video controls such as play and pause could be activated via the keyboard, but other

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controls such as volume or activating captions or audio descriptions could not be activated

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by the keyboard rendering these players inaccessible.

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When videos start automatically they can be extremely disorientating to the end user.

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This is when a video starts as soon as you open the page and this can be specifically

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problematic to screen reader users. Screen reader users have a aural version of the page

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spoken aloud to them and as you can imagine, if a video starts playing as soon as you load

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a page then a screen reader user isn't going to be able to hear the contents of their screen

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reader and be able to navigate the page - even to the point of being able to turn off that

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video. So starting automatically, which YouTube does, is a serious accessibility issue.

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OzPlayer is fully keyboard accessible. You can turn captions on and off, you can move

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the slider controls up and down, you can change the volume using the keyboard only. We also

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have a unique feature in skip links at the top of the video allowing users to skip straight

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to the transcript or skip the video entirely. We have native keyboard controls and one of

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the things that is unique within OzPlayer is the use of HTML5. We've used a variety

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of HTML5 features such as the VIDEO and AUDIO elements. There are a number of features that

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we haven't used such as the native Text Track API because it's not very well supported but

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as the browsers change, we will of course be including these issues.

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Of course video content can be made inaccessible at the source. So containing flickering or

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flashing content can trigger epilepsy and migraines in some people. In fact I've actually

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had migraine triggered myself when watching some videos. There are other issues such as

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colour contrast and the use of colour. But of course the most important issues are the

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use of captions and audio descriptions. It is absolutely essential that any videos that

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are created are created with captions and with audio descriptions. A text transcript,

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although not specifically required by WCAG2 is also an absolutely essential part of making

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any video accessible.

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We are really proud of OzPlayer but of course we are working to include new features in

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our next version. These features include interactive media elements, sign language support and

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extended audio descriptions.

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At AccessibilityOz we're continually iterating and we would love to improve our video player

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for all users. So please let us know if there is anything you would like to see in the next

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version of OzPlayer