Have you heard of Section 508? Section 508 is part of the Workforce Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It requires that electronic and information technology that is developed or purchased by the Federal Government is accessible by people with disabilities.
How about the ADA? The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers, governments and "places of public accommodation" to offer reasonable services or tools to insure that people are not discriminated against on the basis of disability. A recent lawsuit against AOL indicates that some groups are trying to get the Web designated as a "place of public accomodation."
Now before you change the channel thinking you've wondered into a scene from Boston Legal, relax. You're safe. But I do want to bring up something that I think could potentially have a big impact on certain podcasters and other web-content creators.
The WRA and the ABA won't probably cause the average podcaster any concern. But what if you're creating podcasts for a government entity or large corporations that do business with the government? Do you have to close caption the podcast? Do you have to provide a transcript?
The answer very well may be yes.
If you have an audio podcast and your audience includes deaf people, they won't be able to hear it. If you create a video podcast and your audience includes blind people, they won't be able to see it.
I am not a lawyer, but I can read as well as the next guy. The relevant regulations seem to indicate that there might indeed be some obligation to provide alternative access to podcast content for disabled persons.
For instance, Section 508 of the WRA clearly states that you must include text-equivalents for all non-tent. A transcript of an audio podcast would seem to meet that requirement.
Sections 1194.22 (a) and 1194.22 (b) seem to indicate that closed captioning may be required when there is video content in a podcast. It may even apply to audio podcasts as well.
There's also a possibility that video descriptions may be necessary for video podcasters.
The courts will eventually decide how this all should play out. And if you want to find out if these laws apply to you, consult a lawyer. But I wanted to start this discussion because I think it has important ramifications. Beyond the legal liability to provide access to disabled persons, what moral obligations do we have? Is there a business case to be made for expanding the podcast audience to include disabled persons? How about the side benefits of closed captioning to improve search engine rankings?
I am surprised to note that there hasn't been much, if any discussion of these issues in the podcasting community. It's going to come up sooner or later so I think we should all start thinking about it now.
I usually take the Seth Godin approach to comments on my blog posts, i.e., I don't enable them because I feel compelled to respond to each and every one. Then I don't have the time to research and prepare the next post. But in this case I am going to open up the discussion in case there is anyone out there who knows more about this and cares to chime in.
I also think the ethical discussion is an interesting one. I for one am looking for affordable ways to include the disabled audience, not just because I want more listeners, but because I think it's the fair and moral thing to do. I'd love to hear other opinions on this subject and I'd love to hear from anyone who has found technology solutions to these problems that I can share with a broader audience.
For more information on podcasting, visit my site Podcastingtricks.com.
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Scott, hello again and thanks for posting my comments about captioning on your weblog. This will be very interesting. Although video podcasters are not obligated to provide transcripts, captions, or closed-captions, some of us are already doing that. As you know, my podcast is already closed-captioned, and unfortunately as of today, it looks like it is the only one...
On te other hand, there are people/companies that currently have the technical capability for instant transcriptioning and it is already being used for searching audio podcast content at http://www.podzinger.com. Yes, audio! They used it for their search engine and it is very impresive. They even have a Spanish version of it. The only drawback is that the text is not available for downloading since it is not intended for transcripts per se. I wouldn't mind a few errors from an automated system nut it seems that there might be other issues (legal?) Try it. You might have already!
Podcasters are not interested in accessibility and nothing short of jail time will prompt them to change their minds. This topic has, in fact, been discussed, though not enough. See To Hell with WCAG 2.