Skills for Access

Why this is important

Video presented for playing in Windows Media Player normally contains a significant amount of both visual and audio information. Anyone unable to see the visual information is thus likely to miss out on information essential to understanding the video. To ensure that people who are blind or have severe visual impairment, and who cannot see the visual content, can understand Windows Media Player video content, additional spoken audio information - audio descriptions - must be provided.

General Principles

There is a serious problem with Windows Media Player in that the format currently provides no additional audio channel with which audio descriptions can be provided. This means that the provision of 'closed' descriptions (i.e. one media file complete with audio descriptions that are only heard when a user turns them on) is not possible. The only way to deliver an audio-described video in Windows Media Player is to combine descriptions with the main soundtrack.

If you want to offer a version of the video without descriptions, you will need to offer two versions of the video clip - one with audio descriptions and one without.

NB: We have provided general advice on audio description in a separate How To: Provide audio descriptions for video or animated content - general advice.

Before you continue

The advice on this page helps you avoid introducing a specific accessibility barrier, but it's not a magic formula. To avoid attempting to follow a technical solution that is not appropriate to the resource and its intended purpose, you need to know the context in which the multimedia resource is being used:

1. The purpose or aim of the multimedia resource in question, and whether it is being used to supplement another resource in the learning environment, or whether its use is required by students.
2. The target audience, their knowledge and expectations, and the type of browsing and assistive technology that they may be using.
3. Whether the information and experiences provided by the multimedia technology are already available in an equivalent, alternative form.

For more background on this approach, see our Guide to the use of multimedia in accessible e-learning.

Technique Details

The detailed steps for manipulating Windows Media Player soundtracks to include audio descriptions are beyond the scope of this resource, and unfortunately appear not to be well documented. We hope to update this section with some techniques when we find them!

Testing

With Windows Media Player, the addition of audio descriptions requires manipulation of the main soundtrack, so it is assumed that if you do this, you will as a matter of course ensure quality in the relationship of descriptions to the video's spoken and non-spoken audio in terms of content and balance. Feedback from end users is also highly recommended, particularly people who are blind and severely visually impaired.