[Accessibility_sig] Info regarding closed captions in iTunes 7.4

[Turner, Mark]

James,

Thanks for the informative post. I've pasted below a complementary
posting I made to the CA listservs regarding iTunes U components and
accessibility improvements. I welcome any comments, corrections, etc...

<snip>

Colleagues,

It has been some time since the CO has shared information regarding the
accessibility of the components that comprise the iTunes U
infrastructure. I'm pleased to report that there have been several
improvements to each of the three principal components (iTunes, iPods,
and QuickTime) since the beginning of the year. I've summarized these
improvements below:

In March of this year, version 7.1 of iTunes introduced major
improvements to the accessibility of the application for users of
VoiceOver (the Mac's built-in screen reader) as long as these users are
running Mac OS X 10.4 or later. These improvements have not yet been
implemented for the Windows version of iTunes or for users of Mac OS
10.3 or earlier.

Versions 7.1.6 or later of QuickTime Player (supported on Mac OS X 10.3
or later and Windows 2000/XP) now provides support for displaying closed
captions in the Line-21 (CEA-608) format in addition to support for
SMIL-format captions which has been present since Quicktime 4 (circa
1999). Note that while the latest version of the QuickTime Player (7.2)
supports both Windows XP and Vista, it drops support for Windows 2000).

Version 7.4 of iTunes now also supports Line-21 closed captions playback
for purchased videos (assuming version 7.2 or later of QuickTime is
present). Note that this requires that the user activate this function
in the application's preferences. Currently, Line-21 format is the only
closed caption format supported in iTunes-there is no support for
SMIL-format or QTText captions.

The new iPods that were just announced this month also reportedly
support toggling Line-21 closed caption playback. Currently, Line-21
format is the only closed caption format supported on these iPods-there
is no support for SMIL-format or QTText captions. Apple has not yet
indicated whether a firmware update will be released to add this support
for Line-21-format captions to older video-enabled iPods. 

I hope this information is helpful to campuses who wish to stay abreast
of accessibility developments with these products. Please forward any
comments, questions, or corrections.

</snip>

Mark Turner
Director, Center for Accessible Media
CSU Office of the Chancellor
(562) 951-4353 voice
(562) 951-4925 fax
mturner at calstate.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: accessibility_sig-bounces at knowbility.org
[mailto:accessibility_sig-bounces at knowbility.org] On Behalf Of James
Craig
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 4:20 PM
To: Discussion list for web and software accessibility issues
Subject: [Accessibility_sig] Info regarding closed captions in iTunes
7.4

The following is from an Apple developer on the iTunes team. It was a
response to my question about documentation of the supported formats
of captioned video.

-- original follows --

"The Closed Caption implementation in QuickTime (which is utilized by
iTunes 7.4) is a very new feature (it first appeared in QuickTime
7.1.6)  It is not SMIL based and currently, the only tool that Apple
sells that can create the content is Compressor (it does so by
ingesting an industry standard file format called Scenarist Closed
Caption or .scc).  My understanding is that a product called
MacCaption (google it) has recently added QuickTime CC support to
their most recent beta.  As with any new format in QuickTime, it takes
a little bit of time for the applications that utilize QuickTime to
adopt the new features we add and then a little bit more time before
content begins showing up.  iTunes is an early adopter of this feature
so that it will be ready when the content authors start producing
their content."

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