Microsoft's Efforts in Accessibility, Part 2

By Cheryl Heppner

September 2009

Editor: I have a real love-hate relationship with Microsoft. I love some of the stuff they do and hate some of the other stuff they do. Putting a lot of effort into accessibility is definitely in the former category.

Here's Cheryl Heppner with her report on those efforts. This is part two of two parts.

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Here's Part One

It's Not Really Technical Issues

While this is all very complicated, Sean said that none of the issues are really technical issues. He refers to the real issues as part of shaping the product environment. Creating standards helps. The timed text that Sean mentioned is like HTML with timing information in it to style the text so that the text displays at the right time. This has been around for a while, with a definition that stabilized in late 2006. Since then Microsoft has been working on integrating interoperability and implementation with entities such as WGBH. Sean believes that by the end of September the recommendations for this definition should be out as a W3C final recommendation.

The Society for Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) sets the rule book on how things are done for broadcast. The are now addressing the rule for how internet delivery will be done and grappling with the captioning format is a priority. Should this body approve, there will be a formal technical standard for the exchange of captions.

This will be about more than getting the captions from the broadcaster to your TV set. It will address how the captions travel beyond television - their creation, sale, management of the rights, and keeping the caption data with the associated with the audio and video.

Features from Microsoft's Accessibility Group
Microsoft has been working on these issues for 22 years since Bill Gates set up a dedicated accessibility group. The group is now comprised of hundreds of people around the world with access as their core function or only function. Most company product groups will have one or two dedicated accessibility contacts who basically try to be sure their product meets laws like Section 508. Microsoft's group goes beyond that to do outreach and work on standards and policy. They also fund research.

Sean demonstrated some of the accessibility features that Microsoft incorporated. These include a new magnifier feature in Windows 7. Most PCs have a button with the Windows logo and if you hit it with the plus sign you can turn on a magnifier. This enables you to zoom in and magnify over 700%. There are also changes with the on screen keyboard that enable virtual use of the keyboard, through a scanning mode where you can get to any key with a single press. Old access features such as the sticky key are still available. Microsoft has many other activities related to access, such as a grant given to a university for augmented communication for children with autism.

Sean ended his presentation by returning to Silverlight. While it's capable of meeting all the requirements for playback of accessible media from a technological standpoint, the internet will not become accessible tomorrow without other changes. The whole product environment has to change so that you actually get media with the data available.

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Questions and Comments

Question: What's the software you were demonstrating with the captioning?
Sean Hayes: The two pieces of software I demonstrated were the Expression Encoder and Expressible Media Player.

Question: Can the end user resize the interpreter and the captions?
Sean Hayes: Yes.

Question: My office has web streaming. Often I see captions that only come across the middle of the screen. The engineers told me it's a Microsoft limitation on how the captions are displayed.
Sean Hayes: Point your engineers to me and I'll sort it out. That's not a limitation of Microsoft.

Question: The working group on text is missing Apple and Google. Any reason for that?
Sean Hayes: Apple is still officially a member, but Google has withdrawn entirely from the W3C. They were both involved until the spec became stable in 2006. As far as I know they haven't done anything in terms of implementation. I believe Apple's implementation of captioning is based on something from mobile phone space.

Question: What accessibility improvements are there in Windows 7?
Sean Hayes: The magnifier and onscreen keyboard I demonstrated are two of the main features. The speech recognition has also been improved and some internal features have been improved.

Question: How do we contact the group if we see an access problem that needs to be resolved?
Sean Hayes: You can contact me directly. If I'm not the right person, I can tell you who it is. Sean.Hayes@microsoft.com.

Question: A couple of years ago it seemed that you TV programs could be recorded to a DVD, but you couldn't record the captions at the same time. Has this changed?
Sean Hayes: I believe those problems have been resolved in the latest version of Windows Media Player, which is in Windows 7. That's what the product group tells me. I haven't used it myself but will be checking on it. Windows Media Player is actually a TV product so it understands 608, 708, DVD subtitling.

Question: I hit 50 and I've found Office 2007 is much different from 2003. I'm still having trouble with it. Is Office 2010 going to be easier?
Sean Hayes: I'm aging too and have the same issue. Have you used the search feature? In Office 2007 there is a ribbon tab that says "search for" and anything you want to do you can type in there - like typing "make text bold" and it will tell you the control to use.

Question: I have a problem with Vista and sound. If I put something on mute and try to turn it back on I have to go to the control panel, then to the sound section and go through several steps including shutdown and reboot. I was told it is a glitch they haven't sorted out yet and that it's common. I found a solution by trial and error but this is an important feature for people who are hard of hearing.
Sean Hayes: I was not aware that this was an issue.

Question: You were talking about the W3C standards when you said we are standardizing captions. You're not talking about ITU standards. There are so many different standard groups throughout the world. Which standards bodies are you working with?
Sean Hayes: There are technical standards and operational standards and domain-specific standards. We should be looking at all of them and making sure they all work. My dream is that with this move to the internet we can get rid of this proliferation of standards and have just one technical standard. Whether we can pull that off, I don't know.

Question: Globalization is what we are trying to accomplish with ITU. Microsoft is a friendly face and many Microsoft people come to ITU frequently. We did a presentation last year in South Africa using a Microsoft product to do a webcast but could not get the captions hooked up.
Sean Hayes: I specifically asked that that be put into Expression 3. Now you can hook up an external live captioning source to Expression live and do that.

Question: Can you explain where the SMPTE standards for broadcast and the W3C standards come together?
Sean Hayes: There is a new group in SMPTE that is looking at non-broadcast, basically that is IP TV and delivery over the internet. A separate SMPTE is doing broadcast as well. The operational requirements for captioning are in the final ballot now. I don't think there is an international version because TV is too entrenched in proprietary and national standards. We're going to be living with 608 and 708 for a long time.

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