Hello Docs folks. There’s a new project/set of docs that I think it makes sense for this group to be responsible for, but I want to get your input and see if there are any team members with a bit of a track record of responsibility who’d like to step up and take charge of it/them (someone who’s not already responsible for another big project).
As you probably know, the content on wordpress.tv (mostly WordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. videos, though starting to include other WP presentations and tutorials, all of which you are free to embed in docs) has not been captioned/transcribed. Adding captions/transcripts will make this content accessible to deaf and hard of hearing community members, will make it easier for someone to scan a video’s content, and will allow search engines to get a better index. As we introduce the ability to add caption files, these docs will need to be reviewed and managed.
Volunteers on this project should have good spelling/grammar skills so they can correct errors that captioning volunteers make, and should be willing to watch the videos on wordpress.tv to make sure the captioning volunteers did an accurate job.
The way it will work for now is that volunteers who want to contribute captions will do so on a third-party site (we’re recommending amara.org, but anything that lets you download a ttml file is fine). They’ll download the caption file (only the ttml format will work on wordpress.tv), then upload it to wordpress.tv through a form that will be available only to the vetted volunteers (at least for now).
Whoever steps up here will be a hero in the accessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) effort, and will be responsible for wrangling captioning volunteers and ramping up new ones (eventually we should have some better docs and systems in place to require less hand-holding).
If anyone is interested in taking point on this, let’s hear it in the comments, and I can follow up with anyone who’s interested. We’re ready to launch this on Monday.
Note that members of the Accessibility group would participate in this effort under the aegis of the docs team, since docs is a product team, but accessibility is not. That said, someone from accessibility group who hasn’t participated in docs before also would be totally appropriate as the head volunteer.
#accessibility, #captions
