ROUGHLY EDITED COPY
ITU
SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
2:30 A.M. CST
FG AVA MEETING
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of the proceedings.
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>> CHAIR: I think we'll be starting in one minute.
(Standing by).
>> CHAIR: Good morning, everybody, welcome to the second meeting
of Focus Group 2. We will be starting in a few minutes so if you
would kindly take your seats. We have participants in the room and
so far we have eight people that are with us online. And he'll be
coming back to that.
But before we get started with the practicalities I would like
to give the floor to Malcomb Johnson to open the meeting.
>> MALCOMB JOHNSON: Thank you, Peter and good morning,
everybody. I would just like to welcome you back for this second
meeting of the Focus Group. And welcome to also the remote
participants.
We tried to provide remote participation to all our meetings.
We've been doing so for the last couple of years.
Of course for a group like this, we have to make sure that
remote participation also provides all of the accessibility features
necessary for participation in the group. And for this meeting we've
got GoToWebinar for the documents. We have the real-time
captioning. And we have audio cast and also the possibility of a
call-back system for contributions remotely.
And so we are very keen to make sure that this works well.
So we'll ask you to provide feedback at the end of the day
on how successful this has been. We want to make sure we are
providing the facilities you need.
So I'm pleased that the group has made good progress since
the first meeting, especially on the mandates and the goal and the
impact of the Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility. We
have a lot more stakeholders active in the group. I know we've got
40 documents to get through today, quite a challenge. So I don't
want to take up more of your time. I know this web accessibility
-- I'm sorry; academia active in this group. I'm very pleased to
see that. And just to remind our friends from academia that they
can become ITU members at a very low rate now and the details are
on the Web site.
And we also have the regulators, broadcasters, users and
representatives of disabled organisations. I'm pleased we have a
very enthusiastic management team and active participants in the
group. So I'm very confident that this group will make a significant
contribution to improving the lives of disabled persons.
You are scheduled to complete the work by November next year,
which coincides with the World Telecommunications Standardisation
Assembly in November next year in Dubai. So it will be a good
opportunity to present the results of this work to the world community
in Dubai next year.
So I would like to thank you all very much for all of the
efforts you are making. I wish you successful and also an enjoyable
day. So thank you very much, Peter.
>> CHAIR: Thanks very much, Malcolm. Before looking at the
agenda itself, I would like to spend 10 to 15 minutes just briefly
introducing what it is we're actually doing, what we've done, what
we've been doing over the last couple of months. And what the focus
of our work today will be.
So if you could bring up the PowerPoints. And that's the
revised version.
Okay. That's it. Good. If you go on to the next slide.
Last time on the 26th of May, we came up with a kind of vision
of what we should achieve by next year. At the time we said December
but in fact it needs to be November next year. So by November of
next year we should have completed our work. We should have -- we
should have a roadmap with accessibility actions, which provides a
solid basis for work at the ITU. So things like standards, frequency
allocation, but also things that can be taken up by other key
constituents including regulators. And the roadmap should give some
concrete examples of good practice. And it should also show how we
can take the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
and apply them to the delivery, use and enjoyment of digital AV media.
It's an interesting word. The Convention talks about enjoying
media. And I think that's something we should look at.
So we will have a very concrete measure of whether we have
done what we should have done if People with Disabilities and their
organisations feels that the Focus Group has made a difference. And
the very important: Nothing for us without us. Those with
disabilities and their organisations have to have a sense that we
have actually done something that's made a difference.
We also agreed some values.
So there are five main values. I won't go through them in
detail. But we are setting out to be inclusive. And that also means
we have to practice what we preach. If we're talking about
accessibility, the meetings have to be accessible. The documents
have to be accessible.
We have to actually make use of the principles.
The second one is we are not into faction fighting. We have
to seek consensus. We have to establish areas where we can move
forward because we agree.
The third point which some might find surprising is that
hoping we are working, using an evidence-based approach. That is
we are actually going to make use of what responses that others have
actually found out. Because on occasion the research is showing
things which may be counter intuitive.
The fourth point is we have to be open. And that means where
possible we should be looking for mechanisms for making things
interoperable. We should be working on open standards rather than
proprietary ones.
And finally, which takes us back to the beginning again, we
should be transparent. It should be clear on what basis we have
actually reached our findings, we've made suggestions about actions.
We're talking about audiovisual media accessibility not just
for some but for all. And if you just press that once more. To make
sure that people are able to listen they can watch they can share
media, they can participate they can enjoy.
With a we left pending last time was the extent to which this
group could actually address the business of creating media. We
haven't said no. But we put it on the back burner for the time being
because we have to make sure at a minimum that we look at these first
characteristics of media, of being able to enjoy media. We also
talked last time about the -- last time we were focused primarily
on digital media. The world still has a lot of analogue media
analogue radio and most of the world still has analogue television
but we think we can make a difference on focusing our efforts on things
that can make a difference in the future and therefore we will be
focusing primarily on things like digital cinema radio and television
programmes rich media on the Web. And one of the other things we
need to look at is the extent to which we're talking about games,
because these are very important for young people.
As and when we have the resources to do that we'll come back and
revisit that particular topic. So that's the media we have to look
at the platforms they are delivered on.
So clearly we saw last time we have to look at digital
broadcast. We need to look at IPTV. We also have to look at mobile
and wireless and the open Internet.
And in terms of devices, it isn't the main focus of this group
to look at the technologies behind the devices themselves. There
are other groups who are already working on standardisation and whose
remit is specifically to do with the design of mobile phones and so
on. But there are areas where the work we do in the group to do with
participation can help us because we are looking at not just the
passive use of media but also the interactive use of media. So our
main focus will be on the left-hand side in the yellow area. But
we will need to look at some of the issues to do with platforms and
some of the issues to do with the devices.
And to move forward, the management group have been looking
at how can we organise our work to make a difference. And when we
get on to the way in which we're planning to structure the work groups,
we need to have a shared vision of what we actually mean by media
accessibility. And you'll see from the documentation we've had an
example for captioning. We're not talking about it in a nebulous
fashion. Really concrete things. So if we take captioning or
subtitles, we've produced a vision that indicates that within the
next five to eight years, it should be possible to produce captions
which can be differentiated so that if people are at the receiving
end are not particularly good readers, the same captions or subtitles
can be adapted to meet the needs and requirements of the end user.
That sounds very much like pie in the sky. Something that
is undoable. But two years ago we talked to some of the developers
of the software for producing captioning and it is in fact possible.
We just need to address the economic issues. But if we want to do
it, there are ways of producing something which is similar to a
verbatim transcription. And at the receiver end adapting the
subtitles or captions to meet the requirements of the viewer.
So we want to have a vision.
Where do we want to be in the next year's time? Not in a
prescriptive sense. But if we need to -- if we want to get buy-in
and if we want to get people to endorse what we're doing, it has to
be something they find interesting, compelling, to get them going.
Then we need to go back and look at the present. Where are we right
now? That's the red block here. We need to have a clear view of
where are we starting from. And also identify the kinds of obstacles
that may be in our way.
We heard some examples of this at the May 26th meeting. And
once we've got a vision about the future, a description of where we
are at the moment and the kinds of obstacles that are in our way to
make that vision a reality, we should be able to identify a number
of actions, things that need to be done now or in the near future
to improve the accessibility of media.
And in a parallel strand, that's the yellow building block
down here, we want to end up with a roadmap of actions. And a number
of metrics. A number of Key Performance Indicators.
What do we actually need to do? How do we measure what we're
doing to see if we've actually achieved our goals or not?
At the last meeting we agreed on seven deliverables. And I
won't go through all of them because you can read about that. But
remember what we're aiming at is a roadmap of actions that should
be followed up by the ITU to promote digital AV media accessibility.
So the colour coding, green is some final output document.
Light green is a preliminary document. And yellow just indicates
that that's where we're working on those particular things.
I think we'll have to move that delivery date forward. It's
not good enough to deliver something in December if it's got to be
dealt with in November. It's a bit like having your Christmas
presents ready for January the 2nd it's okay to receive a present
but if Christmas is celebrated December 25th then you're a bit late
if we have a date for November then it's important we move our final
deliverable forward to meet that requirement.
So what we're suggesting is a total of eight meetings. We've
had the first one. This is the second one. And we'll be talking
about the future venues. And our work will be sort of moving from
the worm's eye perspective, looking up, looking at the detail for
this particular facade but actually getting a bird's eye view getting
the big picture and looking down and seeing how all of the various
pieces actually relate to each other. So we're going to be switching
from a bird's eye view to a worm's eye view. And that's why we've
got different groups with very different focuses, Working Groups,
all contributing to give us the bird's eye view.
We mentioned the mantra. We've got nothing for us without
us. We've got to make sure that we engage with persons who have
disabilities and their organisations. And instead of just thinking
about a deliverable back some time in November of 2012, I think as
soon as the -- we have some particular findings, we should try to
engage with key stakeholders, start discussing the implications of
these findings as early as possible because accessibility is a fairly
complex area. It's an area which really isn't very well understood.
So probably as early as November we'll be starting to see
findings emerging that we will have to take out and discuss with key
stakeholders to make sure that we can actually make a difference.
Last time we agreed on ten Working Groups. A through to J.
And just press the arrow key just to bring up the colour.
We've got the green ones. These are to do with the platforms.
So we identified the three platform areas we were going to focus on.
We've got areas which are looking at Access Services and
accessibility. And if we go take one more, we've got David Wood's
area which is emerging Access Services. Those are things we already
have but things which are about to emerge and make a difference.
And we also have a group which is looking specifically at
participation and digital media. That's simply because we're still
not 100% certain about not just the passive consumption of media but
interactivity. How do we handle participation? How do we handle
situations where people increasingly not just consume but they choose
things, they share things and in some cases they are co-creators or
even creating media. We have one group chaired by Pradipta which
is going to be helping us understand some of these issues with
participation with interaction.
And then we have a group which is perhaps a little bit too
specific at the moment. We may need to change the title slightly
to something like legislation for regulation but the point here is
we need to look at the point how do we measure success. Simple
example that Clyde mentioned from the U.S., the current criterion
for measuring the quality of captions is the extent to which they
are a verbatim transcription. Because of the legacy aspects of
captioning there's a tradition from courtrooms of having a written
record of what's said.
The difficulty if you only have that criterion is there are
some people who don't benefit from a verbatim transcription when you
have a lot of politicians discussing, they are speaking too fast.
And therefore, it doesn't make sense to present subtitles at 200 words
a minute if nobody at the other end can actually read that fast.
So we may need to look at supply side metrics, measures of
the things we're producing. But also look at measures through Access
Services. Do people actually know they exist? Do people actually
use them? Do they actually enjoy programmes as a result of it?
That's not always the case.
And finally we have a couple of people online at the moment
one of the two certainly Mia Ahlgren, what we discovered last time
is we have to practice what we preach. So we have to be accessible
in terms of our processes. And we'll be suggesting in the course
of this meeting we have -- which looks at how accessible our actions
are, processes actually are.
So what we're going to be doing today is focusing on the work
of those Working Groups. We're going to be agreeing on what we
actually want to do in the coming months.
We're going to be looking at what the current situation is
in the various groups.
We want to be looking at the visions. And not in a
prescriptive sense. But being able to get the people who are not
specialists in this area interested and engaged in this particular
area so they can see that it does make sense to work on this particular
area.
So these visions will actually have to resonate with a number
of different stakeholders.
The third thing is identifying the current obstacles. And
then moving forward to say: How can we resolve some of these issues?
What actions are actually needed? And finally, we would end up with
our seventh deliverable, the roadmap with actions we were talking
about.
So the focus of our meeting today isn't just to plow through
40 documents. The focus is to agree on what we're going to be doing
in these Working Groups.
We'll be suggesting from the management that some of the
documents don't need to be discussed at this particular point. But
certainly need to be handed over to the Working Groups for detailed
analysis as inputs to their ongoing work.
So our suggestion would be to look at all 40 of them. But
just to assign them for further consideration to appropriate Working
Groups. And we have some suggestions which we have indicated in the
agenda.
And in terms of our logistics, what are we going to be doing?
We'll be coming back and talking in more detail about those particular
points. How to join a Working Group. How to contribute to a Working
Group. How to discuss differences of opinion. And therefore
actually reaching a consensus. And when there is a consensus our
suggestions we make our findings public by putting them in a frozen
form on the Web site.
So that was an attempt before we look at the agenda just to
give you the big picture to say what it is we've done. What we've
been doing since the first meeting. And what we hope to achieve by
5:00 o'clock today. We'll take an hour or so break at lunchtime.
And we certainly have to finish around 5 because a number of the people
in the room will have to get evening flights.
So if we keep that in mind, I'm sure we can have a very
constructive meeting. And be able to start the work of the Focus
Group.
Our metaphor, if we say that last time we had all arrived at
the airport in preparation for taking off on a flight, where we are
right now this is Alexandra's metaphor, we are probably on a plane
taxiing out to the runway by tonight we should have agreed what we're
going to be doing in the various Working Groups and it should be
possible for us to then take off as a Focus Group because we should
have a consensus about the work that we need to do. And hopefully
we'll be able to land safely at the other end.
So that's my introduction. Any questions? Just brief
clarifications?
Okay. Thank you.
So let's move on. Malcolm.
>> MALCOMB JOHNSON: Thank you, Peter. That was very nice
introduction to the work of the Focus Group. And obviously very
challenging work ahead of you.
I would just like to add that unfortunately for the Focus
Groups generally we can't offer interpretation. So there is -I think perhaps we hopefully will have a change to the rules
at the next TSAG meeting that will allow us to do that in the future.
So anyway, I just want to wish you a very smooth flight. And
a good day. Thank you very much.
>> CHAIR: Thank you. Thank you very much, Malcolm.
We have 13 people online taking part remotely. So I'm very
happy to know that we have 13 people online. Could we have a brief
rundown on who we have online? Alexandra.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Hello, everybody, we have Joel Snyder,
Mark Magennis we have Mia Ahlgren and the two colleagues from Sweden.
We have Michael Debafe, we have Mr. Cole Numada. Ricardo Garcia,
Vivian and (off microphone). So welcome, everyone.
>> CHAIR: Also a big thank you to Joel because he got up at 3:00
o'clock in the morning in the States to take part in this meeting.
So I think that's a big thank you for Joel for getting up to take
part in this meeting.
>> MALE SPEAKER: Hello; hello. Did somebody mention my name.
>> CHAIR: Sorry for waking you up, Joel.
(Chuckles).
>> CHAIR: But we hear you're on the line. Thank you.
>> MALE SPEAKER: It's a pleasure to be here.
>> GERRY ELLIS: Alexandra Gerry Ellis on from the phone.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Welcome, Gerry, Gerry Ellis from Ireland
dub lib welcome.
>> MALE SPEAKER: Hello Garcia here from Madrid, Spain good morning
to everyone.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Hi Ricardo.
>> MALE SPEAKER: Good morning.
>> CHAIR: In the same way that we have to speak reasonably clearly
and not too fast, we would also invite the people taking place
remotely to remember to not speak too fast because we are hearing
you on loud speakers. So to make sure that we actually hear
everything you actually say. Thank you.
So I think we can start. We've had the introduction from
Malcomb Johnson. I've tried to set the scene. So we have a shared
understanding of what we can expect to get out of the meeting.
On the table in front of us we've got a revised Draft Agenda.
It's Revision 2. We made some changes, some adjustments to the
agenda yesterday afternoon after the management meeting. And you
can find this in Input Document 12 Revision 2 online. Help the
planet by not printing out everything.
Do we have any observations in things you want to change in
Draft Agenda is it a suitable starting point for our work today?
>> MALE SPEAKER: It's okay.
>> CHAIR: Yes?
>> Can we have any timing information in the Draft Agenda?
>> CHAIR: The timing information, I would -- it's now nearly 1
minute past 10. I would hope that we could go through fairly rapidly
Points 1 to 4. Because the main meat of today's work will be Points
5. And there are other points, too. But what we have to achieve
is a consensus, on agreement, about the work we are planning to do
in the Focus Group and in particular in the Working Groups or the
11th one, too.
So 9:30 to 1:00 o'clock is what we're intending to do for this
morning's work with a coffee break briefly between 11 and 11:15. And
so -- sorry 11 to 11:15 coffee break. We'll target then 1 to 2:00
o'clock Central European Time we'll go to lunch. And we'll resume
at 2 p.m. sharp and work for three hours and we have to be finished
by 5 p.m. That's 1700 CET which presumably something like 11 in
the morning for Joel and the others.
David?
>> DAVID WOOD: Sorry.
>> CHAIR: Sorry could you identify yourself.
>> DAVID WOOD: Sorry it's David Wood here Central European
Summertime rather than Central European Time.
>> CHAIR: I stand corrected. Thank you very much. So I think
the assent of the meeting is we take this as the agenda -- the Draft
Agenda as the starting point for our work. So we have approved the
Draft Agenda. And we have the document allocation that we have as
we heard from Malcomb Johnson about 40 documents.
The suggestions we do not discuss all of these in details
because a number of them are specific documents which would be best
dealt with in individual Working Groups. And they will then return
are for work in the Focus Group per se.
There are one or two exceptions and we'll go through these
and I'll try to provide a brief introduction and ask the people behind
them to add a few words just to get a sense of what the document is
about and the rationale for presenting it.
Is that satisfactory? Because in that way we can in fact
finish by 5 p.m.
Okay. So we can move on to Point 3, which is approval of the
report of the first Focus Group meeting on the 26th of May. That's
Input Document -- sorry; Output Document. That's why it's AVA-O for
output and it's the first output document. We've got room for
growth. There's enough room there for 9999 documents. So I'm
hoping we're not going to be producing that quantity.
So for those of you who have had a look at the report, is it
a faithful record of what we discussed and agreed at the meeting of
the 26th of May?
Are there any requests to add or modify things in the report
from the first meeting?
Anybody online? No.
So I think we can take the report from the first meeting as
approved.
Point 4. Logistics and infrastructure.
As we discussed before we even started this Focus Group, it's
going to be very important to have an infrastructure for the meetings
and the work between meetings that can be used effectively not just
by us but for everybody. And that means to say we have to practice
what we preach. We have to make sure that our meetings are accessible
and also to Persons with Disabilities.
We noted that there were some problems in connection with
remote participation. And we asked Mia Ahlgren and Mark Magennis
to help us in connection with that meeting. And Mia and Marc have
been looking at it. Marc put a questionnaire in -- Mark put a
questionnaire in place on the Internet and a number of people have
responded. And I think if Mark is online, it would be useful for
Mark just to briefly tell us what you've been doing and what kind
of issues you've identified. Just the main bullets, the main issues
you've identified so far, Mark.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: Thank you, Peter, I am online. Can you hear
me well.
>> CHAIR: A little louder if possible.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: I'll have to shout. How about this? Is that
better.
>> CHAIR: That's fine. We can hear you now.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: Okay. Great. Do I have ten minutes? Could
I have that much time.
>> CHAIR: I would prefer five rather than ten because ->> MARK MAGENNIS: Okay. I'll be very brief then.
As Peter said, Mia Ahlgren and I, Mia is from the Swedish
Disability Federation, I'm from NCBI in Ireland, we've been looking
into this very briefly. But we did a survey of some people that
participated remotely in the first meeting.
First of all, I should just say, you know, the main reasons
for participating remotely are usually to do with the costs and the
time involved or difficulties traveling to meetings particularly for
People with Disabilities.
So a lot of people really don't have a choice of participating
except remotely of the but their participation would be valuable to
everybody.
So that's the background.
In the first meeting we used a whole range of tools for
participating.
The first thing is a tool called GoToMeeting where you can
view the slides on the -- the presenter's slides in a kind of a -I suppose it's a web browser window. We're using a similar one called
GoToWebinar at the moment and I think it shows the screen of
somebody's laptop at the last time it was Masahito Kawamori's laptop
we also had a live transcript which we also have this time which was
very difficult to find this time we have streaming audio for the
meeting room. I don't think we got that in this meeting but we got
the telephone link which is the dial-in teleconference facility which
gives the real-time audio from the meeting room and allows the remote
participants to make contribution.
We also have a chat facility where we can chat the organizers
or the technical administrator just in case there's any problems
there or with other participates who log into the chat. And I think
anybody can log in, including people who are actually at the meeting.
I should clarify just for the sake of the people who are
remotely participating, I'm not actually showing any slides here.
I'm just talking if you wondered.
Just briefly, the good experiences from the first meeting,
which people responded in the survey, the best thing was that some
remote participants were able to attend the meeting from their desk
in their own country, follow the proceedings in full and contribute
like raise their hand in a way and say things, make contributions,
ask questions, et cetera.
So there was generally a lot of praise for the work done by
the Chairperson, Peter, also the text transcribers were very good.
And the ITU telephone operator.
So there was a lot of good work done to try to make it work.
But there was a number of main issues noted.
Firstly, some of the tools like GoToMeeting are not accessible
to some participants. For instance, GoToMeeting is not accessible
with a screenreader.
Some of the content is not accessible. For instance there
was no sign language streaming video for deaf people.
There was a problem with a lot of people and I think there
still is a problem of not knowing that the tools are there and not
being able to find them. There's -- like I gave a list of the tools
that we used. There were five different tools. They are completely
unintegrated. So the whole thing is quite complex. You end up with
a lot of windows and it can be quite difficult.
There's a problem that people reported of not knowing how to
raise their hand to speak. This is obviously very important. You
have to -- you don't want to just interrupt. I found myself at the
last meeting actually interrupting the speakers, which was -- is a
very uncomfortable thing to do.
There was the facility of sending a chat message to the
organizers which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't.
I notice with the new tool we're using this time Go To webinar
it actually has on the control panel a button for raising your hand.
Now I haven't tried it yet but it will be interesting to see what
happens and who knows this hand is being raised and whether that will
be responded to. So perhaps some of the remote participants might
try using that if they have got GoToWebinar open.
There was difficulty, as well, understanding the speakers,
some of the presentations. Sometimes the audio quality over the
telephone line dropping in and out. It certainly would be lower
audio quality than you would get in the meeting room. And
presentations obviously speak with different accents and some speak
very fast. So that -- everybody knows that's an issue. But it's
a bigger issue for remote participation. You have to listen over
an audio link.
And then the last problem that was -- that came out or the
last major problem was some technical glitches. For instance the
live text transcript which was very, very good, unfortunately
disappeared at one point.
And then there's a number of minor issues to do with how
comfortable people felt doing it and that kind of thing.
So just to wrap up in terms of going towards solutions for
this, basically it's about two things. It's about the tools. But
it's also about the procedures for managing participation. So that
everybody knows who is speaking and that kind of thing. So tools
like I say we're using this GoToWebinar which has a hand raising
button I haven't tried it yet but it will be interesting to see if
it works but it's very interesting to see how tools can be
facilitated. Procedures would come in for instance in things like
the Chair always announcing the names of speakers which I think the
Chair does. But sometimes participants when they maybe ask a
question at the end of a presentation often don't tell their names
so particularly people outside of the meeting room don't know who
is talking. So that kind of thing. There is a draft proposal I think
Peter mentioned it there for a new Working Group on access for working
procedures.
This would be chaired I think by myself and Mia. And we would
be working not only on this remote participation but also general
participation. It was mentioned there again that participation in
the Working Groups for example would have to be inclusive and open
to all. And there again, you're talking about tools and procedures
for that. So we are hoping to monitor how that's going. And make
suggestions.
We don't expect we're going to suddenly fix all of this and
we're going to have fantastic fully inclusive remote participation
from the next meeting forward. But we hope to make progress during
the time of this Focus Group and certainly allow as best as we can.
So that's it really. I don't know what the procedure is for
considering this proposal. And actually forming the Working Group.
But perhaps we can talk about that with the Secretariat. And we'll
also need to be briefed on the procedures for submitting reports and
recommendations to the Focus Group.
But I'm very pleased that the ITU and the Focus Group have
taken this on. I think this is very, very important. Not only given
that this Focus Group is inclusion but it's inclusion should be a
part of all ITU work and part of the organisation so thank you very
much Peter for giving me this opportunity to contribute. And I would
urge everybody else who is remotely participating we'll send around
a link for the survey which you may not have already filled in but
it would be great to get your feedback about what worked and what
didn't work and suggestions for how things could be improved. So
I suppose we'll be sending that link around some time after today.
So good luck with your participation. Thank you very much.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Mark. And thank you, Mia, for your inputs.
If we're going to practice what we preach, we have to listen very
carefully to the feedback we are getting here. So what is clear is
that we'll have to have some way of describing our procedures to make
sure that people know -- are aware of what the features are. What
we can actually do. How they can be used.
And we'll have to be far more explicit about this to make sure
that not just the work in this room but those who are participating
remotely at Focus Group meetings but between meetings when they are
working in specific Working Groups actually comes to fruition in a
concrete and useful fashion.
So if both Mark and Mia are happy about it, we'll be coming
back and talking about that new Working Group. But I think it's going
to be very important for us to have someone to keep us on our toes
to make sure that what we're doing is truly accessible so that we
can ensure a broad participation in the work of the Working Groups
from those who won't have the money to take part in all of the Focus
Group meetings. And I think it isn't necessary everyone's problem
but we have to address these issues carefully. So thanks again Mark
and Mia.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Just wanted to add a comment to Mark.
Mark, we had the captioning records. But it was a decision not to
put it online because sometimes the names were not correct. They
were not corresponding to the intervener. So they are not official.
But if you need them, they are available. I have all of the five.
But it was the management decision not to put them online because
of the distance -- because of the remote thing and the captioner could
not sometimes identify who was speaking. That's why. This was the
reason.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: Okay. I guess that's Alexandra, yeah?
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Yes; yes.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: Well, okay. I suppose maybe we would ask
people what they -- I suppose if the ITU don't want to do that, if
the Focus Group doesn't want to do that and that's up to the Focus
Group. But in terms of it being misleading for participants, I think
if people know that there may be some inaccuracies I think they can
work around that. I think most people would like to have access to
the captioning afterwards.
In fact one of the people who contributed to the survey said
just that. It was really useful to be able to review the live text
transcript after the meeting.
>> CHAIR: So I think that specific point we need to look at. If
there's a consensus that we should have the captioning record
available through the FTP sites for those who reach their uses as
long as there's an understanding that there is a best effort action
I think we got the very best captioners we could have doing this I'm
amazed at the quality of captioning. I think it's impressive. But
clearly they won't always be able to get the names. Then we have
two options to have the record as-is. And that we can certainly
agree. But then there would have to be that rider, that condition
that people are aware of and accept the fact that there may be minor
inaccuracies to do with names.
Is that the sense of the meeting that we should do that from
now on? And of course with the acceptance of the captioners
themselves?
Okay. I think there seems to be a consensus we take on board
your suggestion, Mark. And that we will do that for future meetings.
Is that okay?
>> MARK MAGENNIS: Yes, great. Thanks.
>> CHAIR: So as we talked about in the presentation, we have to
look at the infrastructure for these meetings. But also the
infrastructure for the Working Groups themselves.
And I pulled up a slide. I don't know if Alexandra could pull
up the PowerPoint again, the one that I showed in the introduction.
Just backtracking a couple of slides. It's the one -- that
one there for logistics. The one after. The one there if you could
just -- this is just a brief summary of the various things. But what
we're suggesting is there needs to be a mechanism for people to join
a Working Group. We have discussed different options. But I think
the easiest way is for each of you to -- to go through the documents
and in the next week or so just to indicate which group or groups
are most interesting for you. There's no limitation, it's more a
question of your time. But to read through the introductory document
for each of those groups which we'll be looking at in the course of
this meeting. And then saying which group or groups you would be
interested in taking part in.
And hopefully this meeting will serve to give you a fair idea
of what they actually involve.
There are a number of people in the room who have already
started to contribute. Our colleague from Holland has already made
some invaluable suggestions in terms of the group to do with digital
television. But also the Working Group J on regulation. And other
people have been providing inputs.
But the first thing is to take a decision, which group would
make sense for me to contribute to.
And as you have seen from my introduction, we have a basic
template for what it is we're doing. The basic structure is looking
to provide some sort of vision. What is it we want to achieve in
that particular area. If it's captioning as a good example. If it's
audio description and -- audiovisual description as it's called in
the states or audio subtitles or spoken subtitles or spoken
captioning, we've got a fairly clear idea of what it is we would like
to achieve.
When it comes to platforms, it's slightly different. When
it comes to regulation, it's a slightly different perspective yet
again. And have a look and if you find there's more than one group,
then join more.
What we're looking to do is get you to contribute to these
four questions.
Once we have the names in place the idea is to take the basic
framework from those input documents and put them into some sort of
collaborative forum. We had originally thought about Google Docs
this is known to be the least bad of the collaborative working
documents as far as the European organisations have helped us are
concerned. The issue with that is frankly Google Docs isn't
accessible in all countries. There are some countries where Google
for various reasons isn't accessible to citizens in that country.
And therefore we have the next week or so to find either a
collaborative tool document like Google Docs or Wikispaces that we
can actually host and make sure it is accessible in everything -in every country that has access to the Internet.
So we'll be letting you know within the next fortnight which
tool we're able to use. And again, we'll be working closely with
Mia and Mark and the others with the ITU organisation to find
something which is a simple and easy to use as possible. That's very,
very important. And it has to be able to support screenreaders.
So we're expecting to get you to work together collaboratively
to write things. And at some point we're expecting that the
consensus on particular issues will be in place. And at that point
it will be possible to freeze part of the document or take a separate
document and say this is something we would like to discuss more
widely with constituents, with other stakeholders. Then we can move
it out of this closed environment of the Working Groups on to the
Web site. So that anybody in principle can access is it and see what
it is we are looking at and use that public document as a start for
discussion.
But before we get that far, there may be situations where you
need to discuss things. And that's why we need to look at things
in GoToMeeting or Adobe Connect so that people within a Working Group,
just a limited number of people, can actually have a discussion.
You may want to just do it bilaterally and simple things like
Skype work quite well I've been speaking with my two Vice Chairs on
Skype either directly or via the phone and that seems to be a
reasonably reliable and cheap way of doing things. Again we need
to think about the cost implications, Pradipta and I have also been
talking about things on and off July and August through Skype.
So inputs in a written form in a way where we can track what's
been happening to a document over time. When there's a need to
discuss things using some kind of real-time discussion forum. And
then when there is a consensus, this will be handled by the
coordinator of the group. Agreement to publish a preliminary
finding which then would be handed to -- sent to Alexandra and posted
on the Web site. So that's how we're suggesting that we should be
working between Focus Group meetings.
And we have already heard from all sorts of individuals who
have prepared -- and organisations, too, who are interested in
contributing to different -- each of these four questions in each
of these Working Groups.
So I'm pretty sure that there's quite a lot of input. And
it's going to be an interesting time just to organise this content
in a coherent fashion so we can get the message across.
Does that make sense? Is it an acceptable starting point for
looking at not just what happens at Focus Group meetings but what
happens between Focus Group meetings? Any observations in terms of
logistics from the floor or from our remote participants?
Do we have anybody wishing to comment on it?
So I would take the silence as being a general endorsement
for that line of approach. That means that we will have to work
pretty rapidly in the next few days to get the clarification about
this infrastructure and keep you all informed about it. But in the
meantime the recommendation is that you look at the various Working
Group input documents and see which group or groups you would like
to take part in.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Yeah, I have one comment to add. We have
a mailing list. So if you have comments or contributions or calls
for paper or other things that you want to highlight, that's a mailing
list for our group.
>> CHAIR: It goes out to everybody.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Correct. But we need to subscribe of
course. And we do it -- we have used this now only for future
communication. But everybody, if you're a member, you can use it
and communicate with other people, whoever you would -- whatever you
would like to communicate.
>> CHAIR: So the Chairman again just to make sure that you know
who this strange voice is, I think we've now concluded the discussion
of the logistics for the Focus Group and also the logistics and
infrastructure for Working Groups.
And we can move on to Point 5. Point 5 is the various things
-- the various input documents to do with individual Working Groups
themselves.
Before giving the floor to Clyde, who is the coordinator for
Working Group A, which is to do with captioning or subtitling, we
have one, two, three, four, five input documents which we'll just
explain what they are. Because they are not necessarily for us to
discuss at this point.
The first document, Input Document 47, the status report,
that's essentially a written version of my introduction. If you need
to refer to my introduction that's a written version just to go
through the main points. It will need to be revised in terms of the
Working Group procedures for the Working Groups. And I'll be
updating that in the next -- during the lunch break so we can do that.
But otherwise, it follows quite faithfully what we actually
talked about in the initial introduction.
The Green Paper on the online distribution of audiovisual
works in the European Commission this is an invitation from all
interested participants to comment on proposals from the European
Commission. And this flags -- this gives us the opportunity to
identify issues that need to be considered as we move forward and
work towards an accessible, inclusive society.
So here the suggestions that we put together a proposal which
is circulated to the Focus Group. We're just waiting for this to
get up and running so you can actually see it. Yeah. So that's the
preliminary report for those of you who haven't -- that's the report
from Mark Magennis and from Mia Ahlgren about participation. I'll
just keep on talking while you sort that out.
So the Green Paper is something where we would need to identify
issues. We've got until November I think. But what we suggest is
we prepare a draft and invite comments from the Focus Group and if
there's a broad consensus, then we'll incorporate these things and
send out the final draft and then submit that to the European
Commission.
Is that acceptable as a procedure for that particular
document? Okay.
>> MALE SPEAKER: Peter, can I butt in there sorry I just tried
raising my hand using the raising my hand tool and nothing has
happened. So I don't really know how I'm going to make it clear.
>> CHAIR: Did we see the hand raising? Yes, it just appeared.
>> MALE SPEAKER: Okay. Yeah I just wanted to say that that
preliminary report on the remote participation survey is not
complete. A lot of the -- the one that's actually on the FTP site
doesn't contain a lot of the information for some reason. So you
know that's -- we'll wait a couple of days and there will be the full
one.
>> CHAIR: Yeah so I'll invite you to give us a revised version.
And give people a couple of days to revisit that. Is that okay?
>> MALE SPEAKER: Yes, thank you.
>> CHAIR: If we move on to the other documents listed under Point
5, there are three documents from ONCE. Three very useful background
documents which will be of use in some of the Working Groups in
particular for Pradipta's Working Group on participation.
So we're talking about Input Document 16 which just explains
the organisation Technosite which is an organisation which is part
of ONCE. Which it explains some of their work on
accessibility-related projects.
But what you should find of interest is the accessibility of
Spanish digital newspapers. And there are some other documents
which you may find of interest. Because ONCE has produced an
evaluation of social media, social media sites. And have found that
nearly all of them have got very serious accessibility issues.
So that will be included as -- certainly mentioned in
connection with Input Document 17.
Input Document 20 is a report which will be published at the
end of this month by the ITU. And it's just called making television
accessible. As Chair I was invited to write this at the beginning
of the -- just to explain what the document is. I'm not expecting
you to have read it. But it's essentially a reference document for
providing background information for a wide variety of stakeholders
who have to address the issues of making television accessible.
So it will be available in a final version in the course of
September.
In the meantime we have the manuscript and the introduction
available to you as a document for your reference purposes. It may
be useful for those who know very little about what actually happens
when you present captions or audio description from the time where
you decide to do it to the time where it actually gets to the end
user. So there are brief descriptions explaining some of the basic
issues of how you do this. But there are also some important issues
initially about when we talk about accessibility, what kinds of
accessibility issues are they? We have a number of different persons
with disabilities. We have age related issues. We have socially
related issues to do with immigration and migration. And we've tried
to clarify some of these issues to provide a background document that
you may find of use there are for example references to different
kinds of research including the Japanese research on loudness, the
Japanese work on providing live subtitles which a number of people
may not be familiar with which is in fact very useful but there are
references to a broad range of documents and examples.
There are also URLs so for those who are not familiar with different
kinds of say audio description or video description can see some
examples of this on the Internet. Even the use of speech synthesis
in relation to audio description or video description.
So that's intended not as compulsory reading or anything of
that kind. But as a background document to help you familiarize
yourselves with areas you may not have come across in the past.
Okay. So these are the background documents. And I don't
think they need to be discussed formally at this point of the meeting.
I would prefer as we've got a coffee break in 15 minutes that
-- to move on. And if there is nobody else online flagging -- waving
their hand to contribute, perhaps to move on to 5.1 is to Working
Group A on captioning and invite Clyde Smith just to introduce this
particular area.
>> CLYDE SMITH: Mr. Chairman if I can beg your indulgence my
computer has taken this moment to go to the blue screen of death.
So could we perhaps go out of sequence here and go on to the next
one and come back to me as soon as I can get it on?
>> CHAIR: This is the Chairman again. Yes, we can do that. We
can perhaps go on to ask Pilar just to briefly introduce heretic group
which she's the coordinator with Aline Remael from Belgium. They
are two European capacities when it comes to audio description and
audio subtitles or audio captioning. I give the floor to Pilar
Orero.
>> PILAR ORERO: Okay. Thank you, Peter. Yes. Aline and I have
joined together to gather all of the information about audio
description and audio subtitling. I'm taking care of the audio
description side of it. What we have done is to gather -- a document
of what we have and more importantly what we would like to do in our
group.
At the moment we are also gathering information regarding
activities that are happening like conferences and publications.
Training sessions, and that sort of thing.
So we are welcoming Joel Snyder who is online at the moment.
And we hope that he will also help us to join us there is a document
that we have prepared for you to have a look. And there you are.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Pilar. As I say the document that -- the
document that Pilar is referring to Document 35 from Working Group
B audio descriptions and spoken captions. That explains what it is
you plan to do, how you plan to do it. How you plan to address those
four questions. And a preliminary inventory of some of the key
issues as you see it. And remote -- yeah. We have input from who
wishes to take the floor.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Mr. Ricardo Garcia raised his hand.
>> Yes I think there seems to be a big delay on raising the hand
until it actually flags up where you guys are. It was just a quick
comment. But on the background Document 17 actually which I can
actually comment on later if you want. But just to say that I believe
it would better be included into actually Working Group F document,
as well. As the same as the study on accessibility of social
networks, as well. I mean they are the same methodology, a very
similar methodology has been used. So I believe they should be
actually grouped under the same -- in the same place actually.
So just that was the quick comment.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much. We had attempted to allocate the
various documents where we were sure that they made sense. To be
on the safe side where we weren't completely sure we had left it under
that generic introduction up front. But the point is well taken.
And I will make sure -- I can see the -- that Pradipta is -- the
coordinator of that group is listening. So he's in fact already read
one of the documents. And he will take it on board for the Working
Group which is looking at participation and digital media.
>> Thank you very much.
>> CHAIR: You're welcome.
Okay. So if we go back to Point 5.2, we will be returning
later onto 5.1 but we're now on 5.2, audio/video descriptions of
spoke.captions we mentioned the existence of this background
document for those interested in this particular area which is Input
Document 35 we are suggesting that Input Document 15 which we received
from David Wood and the European Broadcasting Union the best practice
guidelines text-to-speech for digital radio is in fact
text-to-speech -- yes, text-to-speech for digital radio. That will
be the appropriate place to include it because it's -- we will make
sure that the Working Group takes that on board and make sure we don't
focus exclusively on things like television, film and so on. But
also think about what has become the junior sibling of the electronic
media, radio, which used to be the main electronic medium.
Is that acceptable, David, that we make sure it's taken up? Because
it seems to be the most appropriate area to take it in? Yeah? Okay.
So perhaps we can move on to Point 5.3 which is about visual signing
and sign language. And in the course of the summer I have been rather
unkind. I've been around twisting a few arms. And one of the arms
I have twisted has been that of Dr. Ito who has an extremely important
research group at NHK which is the public service broadcaster.
He is concerned not just with things like live captioning but
his group has been doing research for more than a decade on emerging
Access Services. And the work they are doing is often not widely
known as yet. And therefore, we have to do something about that.
We've invited Dr. Ito to be the coordinator of this particular
group on visual signing not because it's a key competence area for
his particular team but because visual signing has had a prominent
position in connection with emergency alerts. And in my
presentations I've been showing screen shots of NHK and the fact that
every time the previous Prime Minister appeared on television, the
Prime Minister's office came along with a -- somebody who was doing
the sign language. And that person was normally shown to the left
of the Prime Minister on the screens.
So Dr. Ito and his team have kindly accepted to coordinate
the work of that particular group. And I would like to invite Dr. Ito
to just briefly talk about the Input Document he's prepared.
>> TAKAYUKI ITO: Thank you very much, Peter. This document is
mainly based on discussion inside of our laboratories and include
-- also we include some suggestions from Peter and also discussions
which were held -- discussions in the meeting which was held in last
November in this workshop.
But basically I think we need more opinions, suggestions,
outside of our laboratories. So we welcome other people's
contribution to this document.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Dr. Ito. So I think we'll have to continue
the work just to identify specialists from the disability
organisations and others who are actively engaged in providing
signing. From a broadcast perspective this is a big challenge if
you want to move from a situation where signing is included in all
programmes to having an opt-in solution. There are ways of doing
this but it would seem to be an area where signing would go hand in
hand with some of these emerging hybrid situations or broadband
solutions so you would end up seeing your television programmes but
it may be delivered not necessarily to a broadcasting of it through
broadband.
So it's an interesting challenge because it's a small group,
a group for whom sign language is their mother tongue. And even in
a day and age with cochlear implants, we're going to have to see -we're going to need another 20 or 30 or 40 years before these become
mainstream and even if they have been done, they don't always work
and we also see that cochlear implants are normally done at the age
of 2 and onwards. So we're not in a situation where we're saying
that cochlear implants are an alternative to sign language but
perhaps a natural complement. So we see these things co-existing.
Because you can begin to teach sign language to kids at the
age of 7 or 8 or 9 months. This is an area which is particularly
contentious. Lots of people who don't understand the issues. I
think we'll find as we move forward the need to create awareness and
promote a more informed discussion is going to be a critical one.
So I'm very happy to have Dr. Ito and his team on board for
this particular area.
The time is now 5 to 11. Maybe it's a good time -- David,
sorry. David Wood from the EBU.
>> DAVID WOOD: Sorry; do you have time for a very quick remark
on signing Mr. Chairperson before the coffee break.
>> CHAIR: Yes, please go ahead.
>> DAVID WOOD: Yes, I just have a couple of points about this
issue. One is that in the -- in a review that we did of future
technologies and the way it might help People with Disabilities, we
came across experimental work which had been done by the Rye in Italy
which suggested that in fact 3D may have a valuable side benefit for
viewers who would like signing.
It seems that even if you broadcast a 2D television programme,
if by suitably creating right and left versions of that you can make
the signor sit forward of the television screen. Perhaps the signor
could be in the plain of the television screen and you set back the
programme. This they believe does help people to follow programmes
more effectively which have signing because they can kind of separate
the programme if you can imagine if it sat back away and the signor
is up at the front.
I wondered if it would be worth asking the Rye for any
experimental results they might have. And perhaps our friends in
NHK might have some views on whether this was an interesting avenue
to pursue. It's not impossible because I believe that in a few years
all television sets or at least I'm told will be capable because of
the high frame rates, high picture rates of the 3D display. So it
might be this is a tool which is interesting for visual.
It does come up in the emerging issues document. But it's
one of a lot. And if possible maybe our friends in this group might
would like to think about that.
The second comment I had just coming at this from outside is
to notice that there are many different sign languages, even within
a given spoken language. And for example one is quite conscious of
perhaps four or five different versions of English sign language.
I just wondered if at any point anybody had thought of just
having one worldwide sign language for a given language. Or whether
that was totally impossible thing to do or should we ask somebody
if that could be done. Wouldn't that help? So just two points if
I may, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Just a quick observation on those two points. The
first one which is about sign language and the use of 3D, this could
be an area where those doing research could actually help because
we can at least identify this as an area where we need -- if we agreed
to follow an evidence-based approach, then we need to see if this
is a claim which can be documented or not. So it's the sort of thing
that Pilar and Joel who is listening online, others could actually
help us with. Not from one day to the next. But in the next couple
of years. And certainly Dr. Ito and other researchers in Asia.
So it's an interesting hypothesis that would need to be
verified or refuted.
The second one to do with universal sign languages. I'm sure
that this has actually been discussed time and time again. And I
would imagine there are some good reasons for there being this
diversity of sign languages. So if that -- that will be something
that could be clarified as part of the work of Working Group C.
Certainly we can identify they are the help of the academic
participants what's already known about this so we can provide a brief
synthesis of this in one way or the other.
And we also have an observation now from Mia Ahlgren from
Sweden Mia Ahlgren from Stockholm. Please go ahead, Mia.
>> MIA AHLGREN: Can you hear me.
>> CHAIR: We can hear you now.
>> MIA AHLGREN: Hello. Great. I have a question. Because we
have done some very small attempts to do live Webcasting. And with
small user groups. And we have noticed that people that have hearing
issues use different strategies to get the contact and they can -context and they can use a combination of lipreading, subtitles and
sign language. And my question is whether we now have different
groups for sign language and subtitles, is there anything in any of
these groups that are looking on a combination of different ways to
get the context.
Do you understand my question?
>> CHAIR: So if I can just recapitulate to see if we understood
it, there are different groups, different target audiences who may
combine different strategies to understand what's going on by
combining say sign language, lipreading, reading captioning. I'm
pretty sure that some of these things have been looked at empirically.
So if this is of interest we can certainly see what is already known
in this particular field.
It's clear that lipreading for example is important. And
that then has issues if there's something wrong with the sync. If
what is being said and what is being shown on the screen isn't
synchronous then that can give rise to problems. But again, if we
can raise the specific question, Mia, you're welcome when we get
started to flag a question in that particular group. Then we can
put -- let's see if we can formulate it as a working hypothesis.
Okay?
>> MIA AHLGREN: My question is in which Working Group would that
question be addressed.
>> CHAIR: I think you could take it up certainly in Group C but
you can also make sure that Clyde takes it on board for Group A because
it would go happily both places. So at some point as we're looking
at different solutions to some of the related challenges that would
have to be looked at. Is that okay, Mia?
>> MIA AHLGREN: Thank you, yes.
>> CHAIR: And we have somebody else.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Yes we have an intervention from
Mr. Yannis Yallouro from the European federation from the deaf and
hard of hearing so I'll read the communication that he wrote to us.
I would like to say that yes, you're right. It is not easy to have
all sign languages on TV broadcasting channels. The global sign
language is not a language but just a code that makes the
communication between two or more deaf and non-deaf people easier.
So cannot consider the universal in brackets global sign language
as a common known language by all deaf persons.
We could first find a way to establish the possibility to have
the sign language captioning feature on TV. Everywhere in the world.
And then searching how to put all different sign language in
this.
Thanks, Yannis.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much for that contribution. I think
it would be a convenient point to take a break now. Also to give
our other people doing a fantastic job with the captioning and the
others a break, too.
So my suggestions as it's 5 past 11 to meet at 20 past 11 local
time. That's Central European Summertime. CEST as they created
which must still be incredibly early in the morning for Joel and those
who are in the Americas. So I hope you can have a cup of coffee or
a quick breakfast before we resume in 15 minutes time.
Thank you very much.
(Break.)
>> CHAIR: Welcome back. This is the Chairman.
During the coffee break. We've been a little naughty. We've
decided to make some suggestions to both the people physically
present and those attending remotely. And that has to do with
GoToMeeting.
Before the break what we chose to do was to use the screen
to show the document.
A number of you physically present but presumably also those
who are attending remotely would also like to have a sense of who
has raised their hand. So our suggestions from now until lunch, we
will try a period where you see the remote interface so you can
actually see what is actually going on. And when we resume after
lunch, we'll take a decision with those who are here but also those
who are attending remotely whether we should continue either just
showing the document or showing the remote interface where we can
see the interface.
So we'll try to practice what we preach and see if we can
actually learn from doing two different approaches and see which
people find is the best or at least the least bad of the two.
Does that meet with your approval?
David Wood?
>> DAVID WOOD: Yes, I'm just looking at the screen, Mr. Chairman.
I'm not familiar with GoToMeeting.
Some people have next to them kind of exclamation marks. Does
that mean they are angry? I'm just curious about what that is.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: The codes are question mark is a question
being raised, typed down. And then we have exclamation mark means
person is somehow not -- if they are not attentive to the meeting
or maybe just listening or whatever. And then we have the other code
is a hand like this palm hand raised means there's a question that
-- a person wants to have the floor. Those are the codes that we've
been using.
>> CHAIR: So against Mark Magennis's name we saw a question mark
which means he has a question. And there's now a hand from Mark which
indicates he's waving his hand.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: Is that an invitation for me to speak.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Yes, Mark.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: I'm sorry; I don't see that. Obviously I'm
remote. I don't see the list of people and questions and hands. All
I have is still what I thought was being shown on the presentation
screen, which is the agenda at the moment.
>> This is Joel, same here.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Okay.
>> Same here from Ricardo, as well.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: So we have just clarification.
Apparently this box that we are showing, it's only for the organizers.
And we are showing the screen today persons to see today here in
Geneva. I'm sorry; but apparently this feature is not available for
remote participants. I'm not sure why. But is . . . I give the floor
to my colleague, Pablo.
>> The ability to see is only for organizers so we have to control
the meeting. And the remote attendees, they are not able to see what
the organizers are. But here we are showing the screen, the
interface of the organiser that is for here.
>> CHAIR: So we identify the genuine issue here which we'll have
to clarify. We probably can't get it sorted out in the course of
this meeting. But this is one of the things we'll have to work for,
for people to be able to participate at a distance, there has to be
an interface one way or another. And we'll have to look into whether
we will continue with this or use something like Adobe Connect or
something else so that people can actually participate fully in these
meetings. So at least we've identified an issue that needs to be
resolved. And I'm afraid we won't be able to resolve it fully for
-- can we? No?
Just please introduce -- say who you are Pablo.
>> I'm Pablo. So the interface we can ensure the interface here
for the organiser to control and handle the meeting so that's why
within GoToMeeting or any others you cannot show this interface with
this.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: So this is an interface so that other people
in the meeting other than the organizers can see now, this is an extra
thing for them at the moment, is it?
>> CHAIR: Correct. So that was Mark Magennis.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: Sorry.
>> CHAIR: Saying that those in the room and the organizers can
see the interface but our remote participants can't and that seems
->> MALE SPEAKER: I can see it now apparently.
>> CHAIR: Can you?
>> MALE SPEAKER: Yes, Ricardo here, sorry. I can see the attendee
list now. Yeah, it just came up.
>> This is Joel. Yeah, I see it, also.
>> CHAIR: Okay.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: This is Mark I still don't see it. You see
it where? On the GoToWebinar viewer.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: One thing is the attendee list that is
there and the other thing is another box that we can see it here and
it is shown it is for the questions, who is asking what is asking
and what we are replying. That is another feature that apparently
only the administrator as we are and the Chairperson as we are only
seen here to participants in Geneva but it's not a feature that's
available for remote participants.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: No actually Mark here again I guess I can see
it now there's two GoToWebinar windows one is the viewer where we
can see what's presumably on the presentation screen in the
conference room which is currently the agenda and the other is a
control panel where you can ask questions, you can stick your hand
up. And it now shows the attendee list I can see it now.
>> Yes on top of the chat.
>> MARK MAGENNIS: Can I just make one little point associated
with this, even if we couldn't see that remotely, I think a general
principle of accessibility, we try to make things accessible. But
it wouldn't necessarily be the right thing to do to remove something
that was very useful to people attending the meeting just because
people who weren't couldn't access it I think you try to make
everything accessible to everybody but you don't then go down to
another common denominator by taking out everything that's
accessible for everybody.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Mark, this is the Chair again. So I think
when we start again after the lunch break just to see what the sense
of the meeting is. And we'll probably follow your recommendation.
But we'll try it for -- so that the interface is visible to all those
in the room here. And see how people feel about guessing the document
or seeing the document plus this interface and we'll report back to
the remote participants, too. Is that okay?
And I think it's now a good idea to return to Clyde Smith.
And if you look at your agenda, we're now looking at Point 5.1, which
is a report from Working Group A. And if you look at the agenda,
what we're talking about is the Document -- the Input Document 46
report from Working Group A, captioning.
>> CLYDE SMITH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you for your
assistance in preparing this report, as well which I definitely
needed. So posted is the -46 document which gives a brief
introduction into the history of captioning. And the Chairman found
a significant point that it dates back to 1929 which rather surprised
me.
Also posted in there, you know, is the usual -- it talks about
the state of captioning and the state of the art of current
captioning. And the value of the workflow chain. And Pilar and I
were just chatting during the break about the perhaps benefits of
pushing the captioning process rather than having it downstreamed
as an afterthought, upstream as part of the creative process. So
we intend to explore that in that domain. And then you know as we
get into the existing work practices, there are significant sizable
differences that we need to review and understand the significance
of.
Certainly under the good practices there is a comment about
the work of NHK, which did some amazing work during the recent events
in Japan after the tsunami and with live captioning processes which
I had the pleasure of enjoying while I was in Hong Kong and watching
that for an hour a day that they were doing live captioning which
is very important for people who need information during an
emergency. And then as we got on with the vision for the future,
talking about quality will be a significant factor, as well. Because
there are -- there is significant debate over quality, whether the
measure could be a verbatim transcript measure or there are other
measures that are being developed that will soon be shared with this
Working Group. So we'll be able to do a bit of a discussion and
comparison across those.
And then you know getting down into the barriers, there are
certainly standardisation and legacy issues that we need to deal
with. And we need some help in identifying those. And some of those
are there. But we would certainly appreciate your input in order
to generate those.
So I think the rest of this is fairly self explanatory.
There are two other documents that are posted.
And let's see. One is the -19 document which is digital radio
broadcast service document. That was posted for us. And submitted
to this group. And then there is another one, the -22 document which
is an excellent work which our Chairman authored in conjunction with
Annie Rander. And it is an excellent review of some work that was
done on the live subtitling for digital television. And comparison
of work that was programming that was done with prerecorded and live.
So it's a very good study. And it's an excellent contribution to
this. So we appreciate that, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
>> CHAIR: We have in fact quite a lot of background documents
we can provide from the research community from the DTV projects and
from other search groups so I think that's one of the areas where
we won't be lacking inputs to have an informed discussion.
Do we have any comments on the proposals for Working Group
A? There are also inputs from Dr. Ito in that document that have
been incorporated into that first document from the Working Group.
So I hope you can spot where we have actually taken your suggestions.
Any comments from the floor or any comments remotely to what
we propose to do in connection with captioning? Yes, David Wood from
the EBU.
>> DAVID WOOD: Sorry; I wondered would it be possible for Clyde
just to summarize what are the next steps. I know they are in the
document and so on. But being a simple man, if we could have this
is what we're doing next. Thank you.
>> CLYDE SMITH: Yes, so we certainly have to continue with
gathering inputs from people and surveying. We need to send out a
survey of these questions about what is the current state to each
one of the regions and gather input from numerous people in
particularly the problem areas. I know you and I have chatted before
about a couple of the problem areas that would need to be addressed
and we need to identify those. So we will be working on getting out
a request to people that are aware of you know -- to gather their
workflows and their current problems in their workflows.
>> CHAIR: Just to add to that, this is the Chair again probably
the biggest distinction seems to be between what are called prepared
captioning or prepared subtitles and live captioning, live
subtitles.
These are two very different disciplines. The workflows are
very different. And some of the challenges are quite different, even
as far as things like transmission. We now have documents talking
about the bit rate requirements for live captioning and for prepared
captioning that make -- that we are working on that will be available
within this group. It's not a document which is publicly available.
But it will be provided to Group A. And that's based on analysis
done during the summer in the UK. Which supplement earlier work by
France De Young at the EBU which looks at what does it actually require
in terms of bandwidth if you want to have captioning and live
captioning and in some cases you may have as many as six TV channels
in the same multiplex. Can you do this within the existing bandwidth
allocations?
Or do you run out of bandwidth?
This is probably the group which is going to have the easiest
time when it comes to Pilar's group, the one on audio description
or video description or spoken subtitles the bandwidth requirements
are slightly greater. And certainly if we move on to look at signing,
if you want to have an opt-in solution, there's simply no available
bandwidth at the moment to have an opt-in solution in many cases.
So we have to be very careful when we identify how we're going
to move forward that we do things which can in fact be implemented.
And look at the implications of hybrid delivery or broadband delivery
to help us in this particular area.
>> CLYDE SMITH: Another particular challenge, Mr. Chairman, in
the lives of areas that I know you're aware of is the delay that some
people incur when they do live subtitling. They may have captioners
offsite and subtitlers offsite and there's a significant delay
between the time it's spoken and the time the captions come up and
this is particularly difficult for those who are hearing impaired
to have that delay. So I know of two studies that are going on with
retiming tools to get the subtitles back in synchronization with the
speech. And so hopefully I hope that by the time we meet next, we
should have an input on that. And to show the significance of that
effect in the hearing impaired community.
>> CHAIR: Final remark again the Chair. Something that
has emerged which is mentioned in passing in Working Group A and B
is the issue of intellectual property and Access Services. It turns
out that this is an area where even something as benign as captioning
isn't always very clear and it becomes even more an issue when we
move on to look at video description or audio description in the
management session or immediately afterwards yesterday when we're
talking about future actions, it may be necessary with current
intellectual property legislation that we can introduce say audio
description video description in the U.S. only for new programming
because of the costs associated with clearing the rights with some
of the other stakeholders like the actors, the script writers, the
directors of films, it's not just the money rights, copyrights where
there's money associated.
It's also to do with their moral rights. You're in fact interpreting
an original work. So what you're producing is a derivative work and
there may be some questions of moral rights associated with this.
So both for the Access Services in general we'll have to look
at Intellectual Property not to get bogged down but at least flag
some of the issues.
And we've got somebody on the remote participation wishing
to take part. Who have we got.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Joel Snyder.
>> Yes, Joel, hi, thank you. Just to pick up on the intellectual
property rights. Description in the United States certainly have
been providing -- I prefer to call it audio description for media.
But sure, video description have been working with that since 1985.
It's almost always work for hire. Descriptions are owned by the
producers who hire us. And as such, I think you avoid some of the
intellectual property rights. I'm not an attorney. But this has
been my experience with that.
The art -- the -- we refer to the art of description more as
the act of description. As in its simply a translation. Making this
accessible. It is not then a derivative work. But I'll leave
further discussion of that to attorneys and others who are better
versed with that.
I did want to make one comment quickly, Clyde. It's good to
hear you here. I haven't had a chance to read your Working Group
A report. But I'm wondering if it covers the development of voice
-- I shouldn't say audio subtitles or audio captions or spoken caption
but more voice writing where this is more and more ubiquitous in the
UK and in the States where the traditional steno writer, captioner,
is used less and less because they are expensive in favor of people
who repeat, revoice what they hear. And the computer spits out
captions based on the sound of the respeaker's voice. If that's not
in there, that probably should be discussed at some point. Because
I think it's a huge factor in the industry.
>> CHAIR: Joel then I'm afraid I'm guilty here because we haven't
been clear enough about our terminology. We mentioned live
subtitling. Or live captioning. And by that we meant both the use
of stenography but also respeaking. So that the term respeaking is
what we would normally talk about when we -- because if we take the
UK or many other countries, more than 80% in fact an increasing
proportion almost approaching 100% in some European countries is
produced using respeaking rather than stenography.
>> Yes.
>> CHAIR: So it's good that you flagged the -- a different synonym
for it so we are more precise about this.
We do in fact in that working document speak specifically
about both preprepared subtitles and live subtitles. Preprepared
captioning and live captioning. And the point is there are some very
different challenges to be met here all the way through from planning,
production and also transmission as I've briefly mentioned. We're
looking into what are the implications of bandwidth allocation to
handle live captioning, which are normally a little bit higher than
they are for preprepared captioning.
Is that ->> Yes, that helps a lot. Thank you. Although I'm not sure -I'm a little unclear as to whether or not you're saying that this
whole notion of respeaking for captions should be handled under
Working Group B versus A. I still see it as a captioning issue that
would be under Working Group A.
>> CHAIR: We've in the scoping have chosen to put all of this
under captioning. So the focus is on the service and the target
audience.
>> Right.
>> CHAIR: So we have included it here in Working Group A rather
than Working Group B.
>> Right. I would agree with that. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: You're welcome. David Wood, you wanted to raise a
matter?
>> DAVID WOOD: Yes, just a comment, if I may, Mr. Chairman. It's
David Wood here again. And of course ever anxious to ensure that
the work of the group is made known and that there is good awareness
for me this issue of captioning at least for the Study Group 6 side
the broadcasting 6 the frontline if you will of accessibility. And
it is the low hanging fruit, if that's the right word of the
accessibility of the media.
So I just had a thought. I wondered in order to -- and that
there are probably three areas that you've discussed. One is the
sort of technology. The second area is the guidelines -- is the work
-- you heard about the ones for the tsunamis and the ones adopted
and the others associated with real-time usage and so on and the third
area is the policy issues and perhaps there's a fourth area which
might be say radio captioning.
Would it be interesting to throw the idea, if you like, to
say let's say we have a special issue of the ITU review. Which is
about the generality. And then there might be four papers in it.
One about policy. One about workflows, one about technology and one
about radio captioning.
So that we make known, if you will, the work of this group.
So it's just a thought for you and Alexandra to wonder whether we
couldn't have a special issue of the ITU journal which has papers
around this as I say the low hanging fruit issue if that's the right
word with captioning with perhaps a series of articles from NHK and
Clyde and so onto look at these issues. It's just a suggestion, Mr.
Chairman. You may well toss it out. But it seemed to me to be one
way to make the work of our group known. And in fact to help progress.
Thank you.
>> CHAIR: It's a very interesting suggestion. This is the Chair
speaking.
Your own organisation, the EBU, produce a series of three
articles which have led onto more on the whole business of broadcast
accessibility. And we could usefully do that zooming out not just
looking at Europe but looking from a global perspective at some of
these issues.
I think the idea is -- it's not so much the labels but the
approach to look at the thematic issues with a number of topics. And
we'll take it on board and get back with a suggestion of that. I
think we should revisit that particular suggestion under
dissemination actions.
Anything else in relation to captioning or subtitling?
Remember we've -- just to clarify for Joel and the others remotely,
we've chosen to include spoken captioning or audio subtitles in Group
B because then we're looking from the perspective of the service we
are providing and the end users for whom this is targeted. So audio
subtitling or spoken captioning addresses the needs of for example
people who don't understand foreign languages and can't understand
captioning. So an example in Denmark. A programme in English with
Danish subtitles those with visual impairments can't follow and
therefore the captioning can help.
It also addresses the needs of the -- in Denmark the 6% of
the population who are -- have various kinds of reading impairments
who are just poor readers for whom the captioning doesn't actually
make the programme in a foreign language accessible.
So by having spoken captions, this can actually help them
become slightly better readers. There's certainly an indication
from Developing Countries that it can be of use. So that's why we
have decided to move spoken captioning into the same group as audio
description. Pradipta?
>> PRADIPTA BISWAS: Hi, I have one comment here.
>> CHAIR: Just say your name again, please.
>> PRADIPTA BISWAS: Hi this is Pradipta from the University of
Cambridge and I have one comment regarding the accessibility issues
of the captions itself. Like when we deal with people with multiple
impairments and then some other issues like say the font size of the
caption itself or the speed of the caption because if someone has
some sort of learning disability so it should be slower and similarly
for the audio captioning, if the person has a certain type of hearing
impairment, as well, then how audible will be the captioning? Those
issues I think also can be taken care of.
>> CHAIR: This is the Chair again. I think, Pradipta, you will
find these already in the various working documents. And I'm
confident these issues we addressed because Dr. Ito's group, Pilar
and others in the room have actually been looking at exactly these
issues. So I'm pretty sure that they won't allow us to overlook these
important issues.
>> PRADIPTA BISWAS: Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you.
So we've looked at the mature Access Services. We've looked
at captioning. We've looked at audio description. We've looked at
visual signing.
Working Group D, we ask David Wood to look at that. And we'll
be coming back to the business of coordination of this particular
Working Group.
At this point I would invite David just to briefly just
introduce to us the context, the significance of the three documents
we've got on the table. That's Input Document 32, Input Document
30, and Input Document 18.
>> DAVID WOOD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, just tackling,
if you will, in reverse order as they appear on the agenda, Document
18 is an interesting and important study about how accessible the
major social networks are for People with Disabilities.
It's an interesting read. And the conclusion is essentially
that one of the social networks which is called LinkedIn is the least
worst. But none of them are fantastic.
The -- I'm not sure in my mind what to suggest as to how to
move forward on this issue.
I imagine that these results are already known to the -- to
LinkedIn and Twitter and so on and the other social networks I
mentioned.
It's an important study. And I like a lot of things in it
including the notion of a Web spider for defining the accessibility
of different Web sites or different social networks.
The first issue which was the accessibility of the large
social networks. And that's the conclusions. If anybody has any
comments on that, that's fine.
The second document on the list is Document 30, which is in
a sense a kind of roadmap a suggested roadmap for the long-term
development of hearing aid equipment using wireless connections.
And it suggests that there are assignments, frequency assignments,
associated with hearing aids.
Of course it's a very sensible suggestion and a pertinent one
and a relevant one.
Technically speaking the issue of assigning frequencies is
finally a decision taken by national governments nationally. But
sometimes they align their legislation with ITU radio regulations.
But not always.
I can only speak personally about the European environment.
And in the European environment, this matter would be one for the
-- at least the CEPT, the body that prepares recommendations for
assignments. And they would need to be asked to make the assignments
that are suggested in this document.
So my belief is that this document has to get as soon as we
can get it to the CEPT at least perhaps there are other bodies in
North America and Asia, as well but in Europe we need to get this
into the CEPT with a request that they consider such assignments.
And we might want to think about who should do that. Is that a job
for this group? Or should we ask the senders of the document, if
you will. Personally I wouldn't see any harm in our group sending
it to the CEPT. And of course I know the people there to send it
to. So that could be done. But I don't know whether it's
procedurally all right.
So that's it. It's a roadmap for the development of long-term
hearing aid use of equipment and it's a good idea and there's an issue
of how we move forward.
My suggestion is that at least we send it to the CEPT with
a request that they consider it.
>> CHAIR: David, before we move on to that, we have a
representative who actually sent us the document and perhaps it would
be appropriate at this point to get -- to provide the context of not
just what the document is but what you envisage happening in the near
future so just explain the context of this because we discussed it
in the management group yesterday and we have -- please go ahead just
say who you are first.
>> Yes I'm (off microphone) I'm representing for the European
Hearing Instrument Manufacturers Association called EHIMA we put
forward this document because this is already an ongoing activity
within our industry which so far did not regulate to results because
of the high political impact it would have. And technical impact
it would have. And financial impact it would have.
Just to give you a background, there are about 80 million
hearing aid users in the world and about 50% of them they are also
using a kind of wireless connection and so far the wireless connection
exists already but it's a very basic connection it's called the
induction loop which is already around that maybe for a century to
say. But it lacks issues like quality, reach. It has some problems
that you need to install it in buildings which is not obvious and
in counters or in stadiums which is not easy to do and you have to
assign special locations in which the persons with a hearing aid has
to be seated to be receptive of the magnetic induction information
therefore the industry was working on systems like the FM radio which
is a snap-on device for those hearing aids or personally communicator
recent development on that. And the notice of that comes that it
should come to a new technology based on wireless modern digital audio
solutions and for that, that system then replays both the personal
communicator FM and induction loop and the areas where it works is
from personal area communicating with the telephone or SmartPhone
from the home environment communicating receiving audio information
for visual or audio (off microphone) also in the public domain and
the public domain is something that has to be standardized worldwide
to have accessibility on railway stations or churches or counters
everywhere in the world without having a problem with that topology
issue.
So for this the industry has taken the initiatives and has
decided to start with technology assigned approach that is first to
obtain worldwide (off microphone).
(Background noise.)
>> To be used for hearing aids. Otherwise it would not be a good
replacement of existing technologies. That is one of the first
things and that's already within preparation in the industry and
indeed as David said we have seen these issues with that the FCC -(Background noise.)
>> The agency for -- to the world radio (off microphone).
(Background noise.)
>> Which I think FCC for four years has been in meetings and then
they can assign or recommend (off microphone).
(Background noise.)
>> Which the national authorities can take over. This also should
be (off microphone).
(Background noise.)
>> So for that we insist that we prepare this document and use
this as a means to set an FCC -- to show the (off microphone) from
ITU and Focus Group for the idea of getting into this next generation
for wireless connection for hearing aids and that way have a worldwide
service that will have better qualities and can also have other
services, as well, like translations and other things. So in this
way we would present this to this Working Group. And we ask to
continue with this and have support from this Focus Group. Thank
you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much. We have indicated but before that
we have a remote participate who has indicated that they have raised
their hand so I think we should ask them first.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: We have Mr. Cole Numada. Mr. Cole.
Okay.
>> CHAIR: Before I give the floor to Christophe Dosche I would
just point out that when we discussed the proposal yesterday, we felt
that it would be very important to make sure that the case for a
frequency was clear. And in the document as it stands.
I think the arguments -- what the options are to -- when we
move from induction loops, the old magnetic induction solution to
say a modern solution, why there would need -- the need for a global
frequency. I think this needs to be underscored so that the
arguments for this are clear. And the document as it stands would
merit further clarity on that particular point.
As and when we have a document we feel we can support, then
we can move forward. And I think Christophe would help me at this
point just with his perspectives as we discussed them yesterday.
Christophe.
>> Thank you, Chairman. Peter.
The need for standardisation of a common frequency is
definitely recognized. But what are we talking about? We're
talking about short range usage and that's definitely not an issue
for ITU-R because WRC is assigning frequency to international
services in order to get to grips with the interference of services
across borders everything which does not happen across borders is
not in the purview of ITU-R. So it is really an issue for the
manufacturers. And I mean I fully acknowledge this request. Don't
misinterpret me. But WRC will certainly deal with it.
We have to address that to for example TC 100 from IEC of the
consumer manufacturers to find frequencies for short-range usage is
not the problem. The problem is to standardize the frequency such
that someone with a hearing aid can use it globally when roaming
wherever he or she is connected in -- to the right and correct
frequency. That I think is the problem. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Christophe, for that clarification. I hope
we will take that back to your organisation.
So clearly we are in favor of anything that promotes
accessibility. But on the other hand we want to make sure we're
addressing the right questions and finding the appropriate forum to
do just that.
Some response? Please say your name again.
>> Marcel responding on Christophe's remarks. Christophe we have
already some work ongoing on that. One of the major issues is that
it is to be interference free from all kinds of other services. For
instance the ISM band which is a licensed band and available for many
applications nowadays. It's some of the bands that have big
difficulties because of the large interference sources that those
bands contain and which are not regulated. And therefore, causing
the problems that we cannot use that band.
At present there are applications in the industry using this
proprietary resolutions on that. But we foresee in a number of years
these cannot be used because of high interferences of all kinds of
other sources. So that assignment for that, to my information the
worldwide radio conference can give a guideline on that. But it
finally has to be assigned by I think FCC in conjunction. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much, Marcel. It's clear that there's
some additional work needed to be done to clarify or -- what the
options are. And I would invite those who are interested within that
particular Working Group that is to say Working Group D to use this
as kind of a case as to how do we actually take -- address an issue
and get it into the marketplace.
This is something that's going to be reflected in many of the
other things that will be there.
One thing is having the original idea. But what does it take
to get from that particular idea to something which is actually in
the marketplace.
So we could conveniently use this as a case for that particular
Working Group. And then go on to look at some of the other issues.
We have somebody requesting the floor from ->> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: We have Joel Snyder, Joel.
>> Yes, I just had to make a comment with respect to social media
and accessibility. I love that categorization as least worst. For
LinkedIn. That gives them something to strive for.
We want to be least worst. No, we want to be least worst.
(Chuckles).
>> Perhaps we can spur some sort of competition among folks to
be least worst in accessibility.
>> GERRY ELLIS: Alexandra Gerry.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Yes Gerry Ellis from Ireland.
>> GERRY ELLIS: Good afternoon. Just one thing that I was
wondering about, Document 18. It refers to social media which might
be seen as a subset, if you like, of Cloud Computing. And I wonder
if the group sees itself going from social media to Cloud Computing
and in certain parts would that mean we need to liaise with the cloud
Working Group Focus Group sorry do we need to liaise with the cloud
Focus Group.
>> CHAIR: So my understanding is that how do we move forward when
we're looking at accessibility and social media.
It's been put in there. But it's clearly something that
Working Group F will be looking at when we're looking at
participation. Because we've got the three main platforms we've
been talking about.
It's certainly going to be covered when we look at
participation. How do we engage? How do we ensure that people not
only can consume but even get access to media in order to be able
to consume. How can they participate. How can they share.
So I would think in the first instance it could be not
necessarily addressed in Working Group D. But as it's something in
the present already in Working Group F and we'll come back to that.
The second issue is the scope and dealing with this particular
Focus Group. And the issues of accessibility in relation to cloud,
Cloud Computing, cloud storage and so on. Clearly this is going to
be of an increasing importance. But I don't know. Perhaps
Mr. Kawamori can talk about that.
>> MASAHITO KAWAMORI: Yes, Cloud Computing is an interesting
issue and relevant in certain aspects to accessibility. At least
for example in for example captioning. Of course it's not live
captioning per se but some of the captions that may be associated
with recorded content can be done with cloud way -- in a cloud way.
So it's not only one area is providing one captioning for one content
but other areas together with the many individuals or many centres
can provide some captioning for example. This is one way that we
are getting a very immediate concern can provide. But at the same
time Cloud Computing can give more socially -- well maybe this depends
on the definition of accessibility in the first place but more
socially accessible and acceptable information and media by using
Cloud Computing or cloud network.
For example more personalized service or more differentiating
service for a disabled person or like aged people. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you Kawamori and we have one of our remote
participants who has raised his or her hand who do we have Alexandra.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Ricardo Garcia.
>> Yes, thanks Alexandra and Peter. Just a quick point on the
study we actually run and the been mentioned earlier on accessibility
of social networks. Social media.
Sometimes if you've had a look at the document, you may see
that we have two sets of results, one from the technical point of
view and the other one from the user perspective, user point of view.
And on some occasions it may seem contradictory because apparently
users say that this or that social network -- well in this case we
should actually talk about social network services actually. They
may seem more or less okay. They can more or less access while from
the technical point of view from the let's say accessibility
guideline point of view it is not accessible at all or very, very
-- accessibility is very low.
This is due sometimes to the fact that many Persons with
Disabilities are actually at this point used -- have got used to
overcoming barriers that they encounter when they are doing everyday
thing and particularly using the computer and accessing the Internet,
accessing information on the Internet. So there might be a bias
there that is introduced when comparing the two results. That's why
it's important to actually clarify this. Because you may think that
maybe the methodology is not correct methodology that is being used.
It is correct. But the fact is sometimes the impressions from the
users can be in some way biased. And this bias has actually been
incorporated in the overall results and pondered and I think this
was an important point to make. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much. We've seen in a number of cases
that those who are actually using a particular access service or a
social medium, there are a lot of obstacles along the way. We know
this from other services like audio description. People have to be
aware that something exists. They have to use it. And they have
to benefit from it. One of the challenges initially when you have
a service which is only available for say an hour a week so that
constitutes in itself a significant threshold.
So even if you know it exists, do you actually find it -- do
you actually use it. And do you actually benefit from it? So it
could well be as we heard from the -- our participant in Spain that
a number of people have simply given up so those who have actually
managed to continue working with social media have become experts
in solving solutions actually resolving these issues but along the
way there have been many, many more who have said they have given
up and they can't cope. So thank you for that.
And we have a second contribution from a remote participant
who do we have online.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Joel Snyder again. Joel.
>> Yeah, hi, thank you. Just to pick up on that very relevant
point, this is an area of exploration for the FCC. They have asked
our Video Programming Access Advisory Committee that Clyde and I sit
on and the particular Working Group that I'm onto really look at A,
quality of description which I would love to have a discussion of
that here not just quality of the sound transmission but the actual
crafting of language. But also the dissemination of information to
committees. That's so critical. The point was just made. It's
been relatively minimal. It's beginning to grow with the mandate
in the United States. It's beginning to grow all around the world.
But people need to know what shows are being described. Be able to
access that information easily, readily, and be able to actually
click on the description easily, as well.
And that's all changing in the United States because of the digital
transition but hopefully it will be a simple process for consumers
ultimately.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much, Joel. And when we get to Working
Group J you'll see that what we're taking to do there is actually
to talk about metrics. How do we measure things. At the moment it's
called Key Performance Indicators. At the moment as you are very
aware, we tend to have supply time metrics. We look at the percentage
of programmes which have captioning or the percentage of programmes,
how many hours a quarter do we have of audio description. That's
the supply side. But it may be to look at the other side. People
actually, are they aware of the existence of these services. If they
are, do they use them. And if they use them, do they benefit from
them. And we've got a number of studies which indicate that it's
not enough to make sure the stuff is there. If it's there and people
don't know it exists, essentially you're wasting a lot of money on
something which isn't creating any benefit because there hasn't been
any money for dissemination.
So perhaps it's a case for looking at other Key Performance
Indicators and this is something that we'll be looking at how do you
regulate, how do you legislate. If you're doing self regulation can
we come up with some of these metrics for discussing quality. What
do we mean by quality? And that's why I'm expecting that this quality
discussion would take place within each of the Working Groups on
Access Services. But also be followed up at different levels in the
three platform groups. And again, at a slightly different level the
with a regulatory perspective in Working Group J.
So I hope that meets with your approval, Joel.
>> Yes, it does absolutely. Very clear.
>> CHAIR: Great and I had interrupted David about 15 minutes ago.
And in connection with the emerging Access Services and you provided
good introductions to Input Document 18, Input Document 30. And we
just need to talk about the -- your catalog of things that we should
be looking at, which you called outside the box. So you have a lot
of those four questions. But you have identified a number
of emerging solutions that we should look at. And in your earlier
presentation this morning, you also mentioned the whole business of
-- the whole business of 3D technologies and some points we have
already taken on board. At that point. Would you like to just
complete your presentation. I'm sorry we have digressed in the
meantime.
>> DAVID WOOD: That's all right. I'll just try my ten
milliseconds, no more on the wireless connection issue. Just to
summarize it. I saw that Christophe did have a point in suggesting
that we also try to introduce this as well as the CEPT, of course
and the FCC to TC 100 because in the end having common hardware
structures, it would facilitate a worldwide market.
So that would be a thought, that in addition, of course, to
the relevant attempts to get it in recreation 7303 the CEPT list of
things to do with the spectrum, it might be interesting to bring it
to the attention of the IEC in TC 100.
Anyway, getting back to our first document, what I tried to
do is sort of a starter for people to think about is to look outside
of the box and not the things that are already being used such as
subtitles audio descriptions and so on and signing but to look at
other ways perhaps that we could help People with Disabilities. And
hopefully you find it something to think about. I won't dwell on
much of it. But I guess my own conclusion was that firstly there
are a very large number of options. The job would be a very big one
to look at them all.
But top of list for me, my common issue of enabling hybrid
systems to be used so that they could help People with Disabilities.
And my own perception of this is that the coo issue that needs to
be solved is to be able to time synchronize to a TV frame a television
programme and incoming broadband web content. And this is a
technical job to produce that specification. I imagine such
specification might be easy to do for a managed network. And quite
not easy to do for a normal Internet network. Best effort network.
But it is a technical task and it might at some point be valuable
for us to approach Masahito or whomever to look into that in his
Working Group. So it's a discussion document overall. Hopefully
you might have a view on which are the most important, which are the
most promising. But we'll go on discussing that of course in the
coming months.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, David Wood, for that. I understand you
would be very happy if you could have a co-coordinator to sort of
look at who is actually coordinating that particular Working Group.
And the suggestions we have are to think in terms of Dr. Ito and in
fact Taki from the university because both have expertise and
experience in doing these kinds of work.
I will certainly ask you to think about the possibilities of
helping us do this. It's going to be one of the technologically most
demanding of the groups. But I think together you could actually
help each other in terms of the coordination.
So perhaps over the lunch break or some time we could actually
discuss what the options are there for coordinating those activities.
Do we have -- okay. David?
>> DAVID WOOD: Yes, that would be absolutely marvelous. There
will only be one big problem for me and that is I would be the only
person of the three that doesn't speak Japanese but other than that,
it would be great. And if they could agree for us to work together
that would be marvelous and a great benefit so yes, please, is the
answer.
>> CHAIR: And I'm risking being accused of sort of manipulating.
It was just a suggestion from my part. It's very much to the persons
that have been questioned. I asked Taki about a week ago if he said
-- if he would be able to do this and he said under certain conditions
it would be possible and I know having worked with him for the last
four years that he's a great guy for keeping things on track. So
I think he's got not just a technological but also organisational
talents which would be very useful. And certainly Dr. Ito's
research group is certainly one of the biggest of its kind working
in this particular field and that would certainly make sense for him
and Christophe Dosche who works in this field would have comparable
experience to be involved so among that group of constituents it's
up to you very much to say who would have the time and resources to
help with the coordination because I'm sure all of you are going to
be active participants.
It's just going to be a question of who can actually find the time
and the resources to actually help as the coordinator or
co-coordinator perhaps we can talk about that over the lunch break
and report back to the group to see what options we have and of course
anybody else is most welcome to take part with ourselves.
Is that okay?
Good. If we move on to Working Group E. I can invite the
coordinator. And that happens to me just to talk about that.
When we talk about media accessibility we to think about
programmes and films and Web sites. Part of the process we tend to
overlook, how do you actually know that there's something of
interest. How do you discover something of interest. How do you
actually access it and once you access it then you go on to the aspects
is it accessible in terms of it's intrinsic quality are there Access
Services.
For a number of these earlier steps which have something to
do with things like guides, advise release if you're on a broadcast
that frequencies -- well channels are going to be changing, you may
turn on your television or your set-top box after being on holiday
and discover that the channel you want to look at isn't there anymore
because it's moved. How do we make sure that Persons with
Disabilities can find what they are looking for. At the moment we're
still in a mode where people predominantly watch television when it's
broadcast. Go and see things when they are available.
But we can see over time that things are moving from a
synchronous mode to an asynchronous one. You're moving from just
watching everything with everybody else to a mode which we can call
anything any time anywhere paradigm.
So a greater degree of personalisation. A greater degree of
flexibility and convenience when it comes to be able to find things,
share things and ultimately use them. So that was the reason for
actually looking at things like electronic programming guides to see
if these are accessible. For example, do they mention whether there
are Access Services? Because if they are not there, and it's using
the programming guide as your way of finding content, if you can't
find it, it doesn't exist.
Another scenario we still -- we still take a remote control
and we channel hop. We press the button to go through the various
channels.
Well, if you are blind, how do you know if there's audio
description for a particular channel unless your setup defaults to
automatically playing back audio description?
In the UK for example they have a beep. So when you land on
a channel which has got audio description there's an acoustic signal
telling you that there's audio description. But this is to my
knowledge one of the few places where you have that.
This particular Working Group will be looking at all kinds
of on-screen information that leads into people discovering and
accessing and enjoying digital media. And that's what we're
attempting to do in that particular group.
There's again a brief summary of what we're trying to achieve.
And certainly in the transition from analogue to digital, we can see
that it's going to be very important to document things more
thoroughly for example the UK help scheme. Which is done in a very,
very interesting job -- has done a very interesting job of identifying
some of these issues about how do you tune your setup. How do you
retune when channels the change their position in a sort of -- how
do you provide information in particular to elderly users who may
be flummoxed they may be very confused when they turn on the
television set and want to watch a channel if it's not there anymore
how do they find out where it's gone if it's not there these are the
things we want to address. It's not a focus on programmes and
channels but how do we actually find the things we want to watch and
listen to, be and so on.
Any questions to do with that? There's a background document
which explains what we would like to do there. A comment, yes, Taki.
>> Hi. Yeah the discovery business may be also related to panels
or Middleware. For example the EPG you can set this menu you have
to have that information. Just a first set but again it doesn't
recommend certain information or certain information makes a beep
then probably we have to consider also the possibility of linking
with Middleware requirements and set-top box so I think there may
be some overlapping things with Working Group G the platform issues.
Could you make those linkages, please.
>> CHAIR: Yes, thank you, Taki. I think there will be inevitably
a number of overlaps. We have identified some of these in the
introduction into many of the Working Group documents.
I think the focus of Working Group E is just explaining what
the range of behaviors are and what the implications of those
behaviors are for the ongoing design.
When it comes to the specific platforms which applies to G,
which is digital broadcast, H which is IPTV and I, which is to do
with mobile, clearly we've got to address some of these issues. And
again interoperability how to actually handle the delivery of these
kinds of things on multiple platforms. So it doesn't really matter
if there's some overlap as long as we're aware of it and when we zoom
out to get the big picture to get the bird's eye view that we can
take on board contributions from the different Working Groups because
ultimately we'll be synthesizing the findings from the various
groups.
If we're seeing the same things emerging from a number of
different Working Groups that's probably added ammunition to say we
have an issue that we do need to address in the form of actions.
Is that clear enough? Great, thank you very much, Taki.
We've got about 20 minutes until the lunch break. So we can
certainly move on to the next group which is Working Group F. And
that's participation and digital media. Pradipta Biswas, just to
recapitulate on our discussions back in May, remember we were not
looking just at the passive consumption, the couch potato scenario.
We also talked about enjoying in a fairly broad sense. And
we identified that it wasn't just about consuming but discovering,
sharing media, perhaps even co-creating mashups or an example from
the Web and ultimately creating our media.
So we also looked at the move from passive media in the sense
of being a couch potato to some degree of interaction or
participation.
And we felt that the group at Cambridge with its work on
simulators to help understand this kind of thing would be a good point
to actually help us clarify some of the issues.
So I'm not going to take over your presentation. But
Pradipta, you can perhaps just talk us through what it is you're
proposing to do in your particular Working Group, the one you're
coordinating.
>> PRADIPTA BISWAS: Thank you, Peter. So regarding the
participation and media, the first problem or issue what we face is
the dimensions. Like when we are talking about presenting media at
this point we have many different devices. And we are also coming
out with new devices like traditionally we do have digital television
computers game consoles et cetera but now we will see a boom of tablet
devices and surely they are quite useful in certain scenarios and
it's that point of coming up with new devices and also new platforms.
And on our second dimensions are the services. So like television
broadcast services. At the same time we have a huge varieties of
softwares and systems and then we have the hybrid systems like the
HDTV type of stuff where you can mix up televisions with broadcast
televisions and it also opens up new opportunities for providing
accessibility and similarly we have also talked about the social
networking.
And as Peter mentioned it's not only about presenting the media but
at the same time it's about authoring the media which should be
accessible as well as disseminating content to our audience with a
wide range of abilities and when we are talking about wide range of
abilities, then we obviously come to the last dimension. That's
about the users. And targeting the areas, a wide range of variety
inserts like obviously we have builder user we have different types
of impairments among user communities. And in this document we try
to find out all of the stakeholders who are related to cover all of
these authoring presentation dissemination combining people with
different ranges of abilities as well as the regulators and
legislators or academic institutes like us who can afford -- offer
new dimensions or new ways to provide accessibility.
And then we identified that which are the present or existing
main problems in offering accessibility. And the main problem we
find is that still I mean most of the mainstream systems they all
work based on average users and there are various reasons for that.
And there is lack of incentives, lack of due to I mean ITU
regarding the industry as well how to cover people with different
ranges of disabilities and often it turns out to be quite costly or
it sometimes reduces the scope of innovation among a project or
product when we think about considering People with Disabilities or
following 13 guidelines in preparing products for disability.
But at the same point we do have examples of some good
practices across say social media or television or computer games.
People who work for People with Disabilities and it often turns out
when we define something for People with Disabilities it also becomes
available for average users as well and we have examples for that.
And then regarding what should be the solution for these
problems or how we can go forward.
So one way which we are doing in Cambridge is involving users
at the fairly early design process and one way of doing that as was
also mentioned is production simulation like we are simulating
patterns with people with different ranges of disabilities so if we
design and interface maybe digital interface or maybe analogue
interface so using our system developed in Cambridge you can
understand or visualize how a person with certain visual impairments
or multiple impairments would interact with the system or if you
design something with audio system or audio captions we can simulate
they picked up on hearing impairments on that and you can see that
sometimes by increasing the volume only may not be a possible solution
for that.
And moving further we have identified some of the barriers
that in 2011 that impede us to act in the future for an all inclusive
society. And we also got some contribution from some of our
colleagues in India, as well. And it turns out to be that a few
problems, existing problems the scalability, availability,
training, cost and also the socio economic status of the people
especially in the Developing Countries and explaining that it is
sometimes that it's difficult to get certain products here many of
times ST products are quite attuned to a certain type of person or
certain type of disability and it's difficult to explore it for other
types of disabilities like there are plenty of products for children
but when you are one who supports these products for adults it's not
always possible and you have to buy all together a new product.
And if you look at the problems in Developing Countries like say India
or China it's more difficult because what is the -- one is the language
issue. Then comes that the products are too costly for them to be
supported by people of their -- I mean people who need them. And
also there comes the question of socioeconomic like Developing
Countries many times People with Disabilities they don't have the
certain scope of getting proper education or continuing education
and that impedes them to get a proper job and in their situation they
can't afford a proper SD technical solution and all together it also
affects their contribution to the overall society. And in those
cases like digital media like television or accessible television
come to their help if we can provide it in an accessible way.
And finally, if we look at the vision on 2020 so we envision
that the design process of any product or audiovisual media it will
follow accessibility and it will cover users in the widest range as
possible and this will also be supported by the Government
legislators or industry who will explore that -- who will go beyond
that average user concept and also see the opportunity the
accessibility project how it can be leveraged by other users or how
it has different functionalities. And finally we should also look
at different legislative bodies mainly at the Developing Countries
at how they can help to improve the quality of life of say mainly
young disabled people so that they can more take part with the society
or get access to proper SD technologies or other systems so that they
can be -- contribute better to the society.
So yeah that's all for me and if you have any comments to go
forward.
>> CHAIR: In the moment I'll ask Ricardo to -- just a brief
comment first. I think we'll need to be very clear about the scope
of this particular group. Because what you outline seems to be quite
ambitious and I think to begin with we'll have to be very clear about
the things that we need to include. And the things that would be
nice to include.
So certainly a clarification of what we mean by participation.
Some of these issues you outlined, it's going to be of a great help.
But we have to focus on what's going to be in scope and what's going
to be out of scope because I can foresee that you need many man years
to do some of the things you're aiming to do. So to make sure you
don't have a mental breakdown and things of that kind, I think we
need to go back and operationalize some of the things you've got but
it's a very useful starting point and as I say one of the immediate
concerns will be the taxonomy. What falls within our remit. What
falls outside of it. What things do we want to address immediately.
And there are clearly a number of things that we have to look at.
And so there's a lot of meat in what you've been working on.
That's for me and I think we should hand over the floor to
Ricardo.
>> Thanks, Peter. I agree with you that what Pradipta has just
expressed is very, very ambitious. And there are many organisations
working in many ways in order to address separately all of the points
that he's just mentioned. But one of the key issues I think he has
mentioned is regarding legislation. Legislation is very, very
important and enforcement of law is very important in relation to
what we want to achieve here and that has to do in many ways not only
with the existence of a body of law in each country, which regarding
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities or persons with special needs
which is the way to -- People with Disabilities are referred to in
many countries, not only the existence of a body of law but also of
a body of enforcement really. And in many occasions specific
watchdog organisations the presence of watchdog organisations in a
country is necessary.
Because that way you're going to at least make sure that all of the
issues that are then identified. And all of the problems that People
with Disabilities actually meet and face in their everyday life have
actually -- are actually known to the rest of the population.
Here in Spain there is an organisation called THERMI which
is the committee of representatives of persons of all of the
organisations of Persons with Disabilities.
It actually has a very, very strong voice and has done a great
deal in order to achieve a very advanced legislation. And degree
of enforcement in making services in most sectors more and more
accessible to People with Disabilities.
Unfortunately -- well fortunately in Spain, that organisation
is backed by the organisation I belong to, ONCE. Which is fairly
strong here in Spain. And has a very strong political voice.
Unfortunately this doesn't happen in other countries. Not only in
Developing Countries but also in Europe, and some others. And the
basis of having an organisation like this, like the THERMI, like this
watchdog organisation, is the strengthening of the associative
movement in the first place. I think that's the very foundation,
the very foundations of having this -- an organisation like this is
actually that disabled people organisations actually get to get and
fight this war together.
And if not trying to resolve things individually is probably
-- is probably going to be -- provide no fruit at all.
So I believe this is the first step that has to be taken, you
know, in order to achieve things in the first place. This is a bit,
you know, not directly related to what we're discussing. But
indirectly I think it's very important.
The other thing just a quick comment on the document ->> CHAIR: You've been talking about -- we've been talking about
the participation. And most of the issues you raised we will be
coming back to when we talk about regulation, how do we do this.
Because that is actually covered by the remaining Working Group J.
And I think the other point I would just like to flag is that there
are many roads that lead to Rome. One way of doing this is having
a very strong centrally -- regulation which is linked to legislation.
We do have good examples of public-private partnerships getting by
from a -- getting buy-in from a number of stakeholders. And I think
this Working Group isn't talking about one particular approach but
saying okay what do we want to achieve. What's our vision. What
are the options. And which of these options have actually been
working. So when it comes to legislation, legislation is one way
of achieving this.
But we see in other countries not legislation but national courts
or other kinds of instruments which are just as much as legislation.
So what we're going to be looking at in Working Group J are what are
the options for legislation. For regulation. And how does this
link into actually making a difference in terms of -- in terms of
making a difference to Persons with Disabilities. So it's a very
useful input. But I think it would be unwise to say there's only
one way of doing this. There must be a number of different ones.
>> Sorry; I anticipated myself to what was going to be mentioned
in Group J. Just a quick -- very, very quick comment on the document
you're showing right now on the screen. And that would be on Page
3, 3 at the bottom saying in participation of social media. And I've
just noticed here saying study by IAB Spain research found LinkedIn
and Flickr as the most accessible social networking site. I believe
it should say are the most popular Web sites, social networks. Not
really accessible social networks.
>> CHAIR: It should be popular rather than accessible.
>> Yes, I believe this correction is pertinent. Thank you very
much. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: We have another contribution probably the last one
before we break for lunch. Who do we have.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: Joel.
>> Yes, hi, thanks I just wanted to second Roberto's excellent
comments about collaboration among the various communities among
People with Disabilities is so critical we never would have passed
our 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act without
the total collaboration of people who are deaf with people who are
blind and others.
One quick point and perhaps a good way to end the morning
session, a real world example of interactive media made accessible
to people who are blind, a visitors centre I worked on developing
audio described tour ended with three media consoles basically just
computer screens, interactive computer screens. You can punch
buttons there to enter this answer or choose that particular
selection. It's like little quizzes for kids basically. But they
are all based on media -- video screens rather. We very simply
created an audio version. We translated the video experience to an
audio experience adding handsets to each video screen. The upshot
of course is that the centre tells me that more people use the audio
and use the keypad on the handset to play the game than folks who
use the video. Perhaps video is burned out a bit and here is an
opportunity to do it just with sound.
Something that was put there to make the programme accessible to blind
people is being used by everybody.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much, Joel, so I think at that point
we finished the discussion of Working Group F and we can take the
input document as a starting point for future work. Make sure that
the participants in the group help you to narrow down the scope a
bit so you don't drop dead from being overworked. Perhaps it's a
good point to break for lunch. And meet again at 2. But before that
I think Alexandra has some housekeeping notes for us.
>> ALEXANDRA GASPARI: We have reserved a table so we just wanted
to get people together. Thank you. See you.
>> CHAIR: Well, thank you, all for your work this morning.
>> We're getting a terrible echo.
>> We're getting an echo.
>> CHAIR: Somebody -- okay. We'll break for lunch. And be back
at 2 p.m. Central European Summertime. Thank you very much.
(Session ended at 5:59 a.m. CST)
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