大象传媒

New video on demand site causes Friction

• By Paul Crichton
• 22 May 07, 11:24 AM

鈥淧olitical correctness is getting in the way of us getting funding for our studios. We can鈥檛 get funding because we don鈥檛 have disabled access. This is ridiculous because a person in a wheelchair wouldn鈥檛 be able to use our equipment.鈥�

This is one of the views expressed on , described as, 鈥渢he equivalent of Speakers Corner online.鈥� It is a website for users to talk about issues important to them in video format. Current posts cover subjects as diverse as the upcoming smoking ban in England, grammar schools and the replacement of the Trident missile defence programme.

All kinds of views are expressed from across the whole political spectrum and you can respond with a video of your own, or just by adding a comment.

So how accessible is the website? Well, on the plus side, you can navigate around it and the video controls can be worked with the keyboard for those who have difficulty with a mouse. On the other hand, the Flash videos couldn鈥檛 be played and commenting was impossible with a screen reader, rendering the website virtually inaccessible to visually impaired users. Even making videos play when a page is loaded, like would help.

These are things that Friction TV must and can be reasonably expected to address in order to provide a proper forum for debate. How democratic can it truly be if sections of the online community are excluded? And lets face it, if some people are going to post videos about disability issues then there is a right to reply issue at stake.

Making structural elements of the website accessible is the responsibility of Friction TV. But where does their responsibility end? The site illustrates some of the issues that come with all user-generated content websites and poses bigger questions about accessibility.

Production values of user-generated content are never going to be really high, because it is usually one person and a camera. I was amazed when I found out that the 大象传媒 Four programme Screenwipe cost tens of thousands of pounds per episode, resources us regular people don't have, even though that is still essentially just one person and a camera. So you can expect to find user-generated videos where the volume is too low, or the picture too dark. Friction TV is the platform, the broadcaster if you like (using old fashioned language) and perhaps shouldn't be expected to provide captioning as old broadcasters had to do.

I'd love to know what everyone else thinks. Should video on demand websites be subject to the same standards as broadcast TV, where 80% of programmes must have captioning? And how might that be achieved? Is UGC and new technology going to ironically reverse the progress of accessible TV as championed by Ofcom ...?

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