TidBITS#572/19-Mar-01
Geoff Duncan
=====================
True online document collaboration gets its turn in this final
part of Adam's series about electronic document collaboration, so
read on to learn how to review or edit shared documents via free
Web services. Joe Clark also finishes off his four-part
accessibility series this week with a look at accessibility
problems and solutions related to multimedia. In the news, we
cover updates to Default Folder 3.1 and Web Confidential 2.2.1.
Topics:
MailBITS/19-Mar-01
Web Accessibility: Audio and Video on the Web
Come Together: Document Collaboration, Part 3
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MailBITS/19-Mar-01
------------------
**Default Folder 3.1 Released** -- St. Clair Software has released
Default Folder 3.1, improving performance in Navigation Services
and Save As dialog boxes and fixing a few bugs. The new version
addresses one frustrating limitation of Apple's Navigation
Services dialogs: with Default Folder 3.1, pressing Command and
the up arrow key takes you one level higher in the file hierarchy,
even when the keyboard focus is in the edit box. You can now also
edit a file's Get Info comments from within file dialogs using
Default Folder's Get Info command. Other fixes include an option
to speed up the Recent menu in Navigation Services dialogs, and
bug fixes in the Default Folder Control Strip Module and with
LaserWriter 8 printer driver Save As dialogs. Default Folder is a
free update for registered users, and is a 1.1 MB download. [JLC]
<http://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolder/>
**Web Confidential 2.2.1 Adds Import and More** -- Alco Blom has
released Web Confidential 2.2.1, the latest version of his utility
for storing passwords and other sensitive information in a highly
secure file on Macs, Windows-based PCs, and Palm handhelds.
(See "Web Confidential: Securing Information of All Sorts" in
TidBITS-441_ and "Web Confidential 2.0 Syncs with Palm Devices"
in TidBITS-531_.) Changes since 2.0 include a tab-delimited text
import feature, the capability to change the category of a card,
an option to show passwords as text rather than bullets, a new
file format that's compatible with the format used by the Windows
version of Web Confidential, and an updated Palm conduit to handle
the new file format. Web Confidential for Palm has also received
an update to version 1.2.1, adding more options for auto-locking
of your password file, random password generation, beaming of
records, and the capability to hide the passphrase when entered.
Web Confidential 2.0.1 is a 710K download, and Web Confidential
for Palm is a 220K download; each is $20 shareware or $35 bundled.
Upgrades are free for registered users.
<http://www.web-confidential.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05020>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05938>
Web Confidential now has competition from Selznick Scientific
Software's recently released $15 shareware PasswordWallet 2.0.1,
which offers similarly strong encryption, a $12 Palm version, and
a simpler interface. However, it lacks many of Web Confidential's
extensive customization options and has no categorization
features. Still, if the more-powerful Web Confidential is overkill
for your needs, give PasswordWallet a look. The Mac version of
PasswordWallet is a 390K download; the Palm version 27K. [ACE]
<http://www.selznick.com/products/passwordwallet/>
Web Accessibility: Audio and Video on the Web
---------------------------------------------
by Joe Clark <joec...@joeclark.org>
Last week, I described what it means for a Web site to be
accessible to people with disabilities (see "Web Accessibility:
Surfing the Web Blind" in TidBITS-571_). Everything rests on the
way Web pages are coded and the adaptive technology a disabled Web
surfer uses to read the page. Things are slowly improving, but
conditions are not good in general. Web accessibility essentially
refers to access for blind and visually-impaired people, but few
Web authors even know about accessibility, and fewer still take
the time to do things right. Meanwhile, with only one screen
reader (a program that reads text, menus, and the like aloud)
available for Macs - and which doesn't work well with Web sites -
blind computer users are better off using Windows.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1189>
But all that pertains to Web sites containing nothing but text and
graphics. What about sites reliant on those sexy QuickTime movies
or Flash animations?
**Multimedia Access** -- Any kind of online video presents severe
accessibility problems by being inaccessible to the deaf (who
can't hear the audio) and to the blind (who can't see the video).
What to do? Here we must borrow a trick or two from older media.
Television and film have grappled with accessibility for decades,
and since the forces of convergence are trying to make the
Internet look a lot like television, the lessons are transferable.
You make video accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers
through captioning: transcription of dialogue and rendition of
other relevant sounds. Captioning isn't the same as subtitling -
among other differences, subtitles are often used for language
translation (captions use the same language as the audio) and
subtitles render only speech, and not always all of it, either.
<http://www.joeclark.org/understanding.html#subtitling>
Captions are usually "closed" - you need a decoder to make them
visible. Canada, the United States, and a select few other regions
use one system (called Line 21), while Europe and pretty much
everywhere else use a different system (called World System
Teletext). The systems are incompatible, but then again, telecasts
themselves are incompatible between continents. Gary Robson's
Caption FAQ will tell you more.
<http://www.robson.org/capfaq/>
If captions are part of the original video footage and can't be
turned off, they are said to be "open." There isn't much open
captioning these days, while nearly all subtitling is open. More
than just video can be captioned: captioning in first-run movie
theatres is up and running, but hard to find.
Meanwhile, you can make video accessible to blind and visually-
impaired viewers through audio description, in which a narrator,
working from a tightly honed script, describes out loud the
character movements, settings, costumes, titles, and other visual
information needed to understand what's really going on. The
descriptions are usually delivered during natural pauses in
dialogue. The largest sources of audio description are on
television - on PBS and the Turner Classic Movies channel, both in
the United States. WGBH, Boston's public broadcasting channel, and
The Kennedy Center offer a taste of audio description online.
<http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/access/dvs/dvstv.html>
<http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/access/dvs/dvsclip.html>
<http://kennedy-center.org/multimedia/surface/home.html>
If you can play Region 1 DVDs, you can watch subtitles and listen
to audio descriptions on the only DVDs with audio description,
Terminator 2 and Basic Instinct. (They work fine on a DVD-capable
Mac.) Also, a new three-disc DVD set from PBS, Abraham and Mary
Lincoln: A House Divided, is due in March 2001 featuring captions,
DVD subtitles, audio descriptions, and, for the first time,
audiovisual interface menus.
<http://us.imdb.com/DVD?0103064>
<http://us.imdb.com/DVD?0103772>
<http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/access/dvs/presspage.html>
Sounds good, doesn't it? But there are a few hiccups.
There is no longstanding production experience in multimedia
accessibility. Captioning and DVD subtitling is comparatively
cheap - in the hundreds of dollars an hour range - but if your
site isn't affiliated with a rich television network or production
studio, that figure ceases to be cheap. Audio description is cheap
only in movie-budget terms, running about $10,000 per motion
picture. Costs will continue to go down, but only gradually.
Another complication linked to the knowledge gap: multimedia
authors should _not_ try to caption, subtitle, describe, or dub
their own productions, because they're virtually guaranteed to get
it wrong. So authors are stuck: the quality won't be up to snuff
if they try to do it in-house on the cheap, but outside services
cost good money, and very few do work for online media.
Online systems for closed captioning and audio description are
poorly supported. It is possible to embed captions in a QuickTime
movie, and there's an entire HTML-like syntax for marking up
captions and audio descriptions (called Synchronized Media
Interchange Language or SMIL), but incompatibilities are rife.
There are so many online video players out there (QuickTime,
RealVideo, Windows Media, etc.), with so many versions, that you
cannot rely on your visitor to have the right plug-in or software.
Plus, Apple's documentation for SMIL support in QuickTime 4.1
spends a lot of time explaining how it can be used to embed
advertising but no time discussing accessibility applications.
<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil/>
<http://www.w3.org/TR/SMIL-access/>
<http://www.alistapart.com/stories/smil/>
Making audio descriptions hidden (so you can turn them on and off)
is difficult or impossible in the various online formats. In any
event, closed accessibility is unnecessary in multimedia. With
technologies like Akamai that distribute large files over many
servers to speed up delivery times, and with disk space so cheap
these days, it makes more sense to offer separate versions of an
online video with open access features that can't be turned off.
You simply select a captioned (or subtitled, or described, or
dubbed) version from a menu and that's the one you watch.
<http://www.akamai.com/>
<http://www.contenu.nu/200008.html#access>
Another hiccup is that nobody's making captioned or audio-
described video. Period. It just isn't happening. Virtually all
the "content" that's available takes the form of brief
demonstration projects.
<http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/ncam/richmedia/>
Why not? There are very few tools. Adobe Premiere and similar
authoring programs don't let you create captions and audio
descriptions. (You can kludge together some titles, but how long
are you going to put up with a kludge?) One specialized tool,
MAGpie, works only on Windows.
<http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/ncam/webaccess/magpie/>
Existing companies and organizations that caption and describe TV
shows and videos are generally incapable of doing the same for
online media. The Caption Center and the Descriptive Video Service
at WGBH are pretty much the only options.
<http://captioncenter.wgbh.org/>
<http://dvs.wgbh.org/>
**The Knowledge Gap** -- But the technical issues are nothing
compared to the knowledge gap. Captioning and audio description
(and two related techniques, subtitling and dubbing) are
fiendishly difficult. You thought designing Web pages was hard?
Captioning isn't anything remotely resembling simple
transcription, and have you ever tried to sum up a scene of your
favourite TV show in five seconds or less? There are, moreover, no
training materials or courses available to teach captioning, audio
description, subtitling, or dubbing (save for one limited course
in description in the U.K.).
Two recent technologies, Macromedia's Flash and burning your own
DVDs, have thrown a spotlight on the knowledge gap.
Flash, the nearly ubiquitous, widely misused multimedia authoring
tool, has single-handedly spawned an Internet catchphrase: "Skip
intro." Flash animations are inaccessible, period. There is no way
for a screen reader or other adaptive technology to interpret
Flash "content." Even demonstration projects in Flash, such as one
at the University of Toronto's SNOW (Special Needs Opportunity
Windows) project, access come equipped with a range of
instructions and caveats.
<http://snow.utoronto.ca/initiatives/flash.html>
Macromedia has, however, finally admitted it has a problem, and
the company now maintains impressive-looking pages devoted to
Flash accessibility. Unfortunately, having read all the Macromedia
materials and spoken at length with the fellow running the access
project, it is pretty clear that Macromedia does not itself
understand the issues involved with access, let alone the
difficulty of training Flash authors. And even if the technology
provided bulletproof, reliable access to alternate versions of
Flash content (like captioned or described variants), Flash
artists have no training materials or programs available to learn
how to create the alternate versions.
<http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/accessibility/>
<http://www.alistapart.com/stories/unclear/>
Then there is the capability to burn your own DVDs. Steve Jobs
made a big splash earlier this year at Macworld Expo San Francisco
2001 with iDVD and DVD Studio Pro, Apple's software that lets
consumers and professionals assemble and record their own DVDs
using the SuperDrive available on high-end Power Mac G4s. DVD
Studio Pro lets you encode multiple audio tracks and subtitle
streams. That's great, however, just because you can add these
features to your DVD media doesn't guarantee accessibility. Poorly
done captions and descriptions can be worse than none at all.
<http://www.apple.com/dvdstudiopro/>
<http://www.joeclark.org/dvdsubs.html>
**What about Napster?** No discussion of multimedia on the Web
would be complete without addressing Internet radio stations,
Napster, and anything else that's audio-only. Here the group
chiefly affected is deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Although
music videos on television and home video in North America can be
and are closed-captioned (they're audio-visual), there's no way to
make traded music files accessible.
<http://www.joeclark.org/snowcc.html>
<http://www.joeclark.org/vibecc.html>
<http://www.joeclark.org/slogancc.html>
Online audio files that contain speech, however, can be
transcribed, and indeed this is the preferred method for academic
lectures (think electronic learning ventures) and literary
readings. It is conceivable to encode visible captions in a
QuickTime stream that includes audio only, but no one's doing it.
(You can also encode the transcript as a SMIL file, with attendant
incompatibilities and knowledge-gap issues.)
Another issue is the accessibility of plug-ins themselves.
Streaming audio is attractive to blind and visually-impaired
people, but you still need to control the QuickTime (or RealAudio
or Windows Media) player, probably using a screen reader and
keyboard commands. QuickTime keyboard equivalents on the Mac are
skimpy and controlling QuickTime media often requires direct
manipulation of images a blind person couldn't necessarily see.
RealPlayer Plus keyboard shortcuts are extensive, though more so
on Windows. If Windows Media Player has any keyboard shortcuts at
all, they're not documented online.
<http://www.apple.com/quicktime/resources/qt4/us/help/sc/pgs/scShrtct.htm>
<http://service.real.com/help/player/plus_manual.8/htmfiles/
keyboardshtcuts.htm#14791>
**Nothing but Trouble** -- So there's trouble in paradise when it
comes to accessibility. Everywhere you look - adaptive software
and hardware, Apple's own corporate support, developer commitment,
Web design, browsers, multimedia - on Windows, the situation is
always at least noticeably less bad and often clearly superior.
Discouraging, all this. But it doesn't have to be this way. After
twenty years of watching captioned, described, dubbed, and
subtitled TV, writing about it, lecturing and hectoring over it,
and obsessing over it, I know from experience that a certain
minority of non-disabled people really get accessible media.
Try it yourself: watch all your television and home video with
captions (or DVD subtitles) turned on for a good two weeks. (No
cheating. Two weeks. Nearly all recent televisions come equipped
with caption-decoding chips in North America, Europe, and
elsewhere.) You'll quickly find you have developed new skills in
reading, listening, and watching simultaneously. There's modest
experimental evidence that even people entirely new to captioning
become proficient at understanding TV even with the new
information track.
<http://www.joeclark.org/research-roundup.html#eye>
By the way, in North America deaf captioning viewers are now the
minority. Even with the poor typographic quality of captions and
DVD subtitles, and the many technical limitations, watching a
video stream with captions or subtitles is a much richer
experience.
<http://www.joeclark.org/hearing-maj.html>
But you know what would really help? Some mojo from Steve Jobs.
What odds do you give that Steve Jobs is the kind of person who
truly gets accessible media, or would get it if properly
introduced? Jobs is already a media tycoon and an evangelist for
desktop movies on the Mac. He needs a few demonstrations of what
accessible media - and, for that matter, adaptive technology - can
do on a Macintosh. Would he then get religion and bring all of his
powers of expression to bear, making it cool?
With that kind of imprimatur, wouldn't we finally see some real
action on the issue of accessibility on the Macintosh?
[Joe Clark is a former journalist in Toronto who's followed,
written about, and worked in the disability field for two decades.
Explore his many online accessibility resources at his Web site.]
Come Together: Document Collaboration, Part 3
---------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <a...@tidbits.com>
Last week I examined a number of document collaboration systems
I've used and passed on some advice for setting up a system of
your own. However, all the systems I talked about involved sending
files - usually Microsoft Word files - via the Internet. This week
I'm going to look at a couple of document collaboration systems
that exist entirely on the Internet: QuickTopic and WikiWikiWebs.
A few similar systems that I haven't used have also been mentioned
in TidBITS Talk - be sure to check them out too.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06349>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1312>
**QuickTopic Document Review** -- The first of these services is
the new QuickTopic Document Review Web site. First, QuickTopic
itself is a lightweight Web-based single-topic discussion space.
It's not completely private - the only security is through
obscurity (the URL for your discussion contains a randomized set
of letters and numbers) - but it could be useful for quick
discussions. It displays messages one on top of the other on a Web
page, and it can email you the messages if you prefer. It's a
clever idea, but I prefer to use Eudora, which offers more
flexible reading and writing environments, and archives everything
for posterity.
I've found QuickTopic Document Review more interesting, because it
provides an easy way to let any number of people read and comment
on a document without worrying about file formats, file exchange,
or comment conventions. All anyone needs is a Web browser.
<http://www.quicktopic.com/newfeature.html>
Here's how it works. First, someone uploads an HTML document, and
QuickTopic Document Review prefixes each paragraph with a "comment
dot" and a sequentially numbered link. To make a comment, click
the comment dot or numbered link, and then enter your comment in
the text entry box that appears on the next page. When you submit
the comment, QuickTopic creates a new discussion linked to the
document and displays it. Paragraphs with comments get a little
eyeglasses icon in the original document, next to the comment dot.
You can also view comments alone or comments along with the
paragraph they refer to, and you can sort comments by poster or by
paragraph number, all of which can be helpful when integrating
comments into your original document (which you must do manually,
of course).
The XNSORG Communications Working Group recently tried QuickTopic
Document Review for reviewing a large white paper. It worked well,
though there are some rough spots. For instance, making comments
and submitting them both take you to new pages, so you must either
create comments in new windows or click Back twice to return to
the original document. The developer of QuickTopic is constantly
polishing the system, so I have high hopes for its future.
To get a sense of how QuickTopic Document Review works, try
commenting on this article via the link below.
<http://www.quicktopic.com/6/D/saEbesdoTmcH.html>
**Wikis** -- QuickTopic Document Review enables _reviewing_ of
documents, but what if you want multiple people to _edit_ the same
document online? For that, you can turn to another technology
called a WikiWikiWeb (the term comes from the Hawaiian word for
"quick" and is often abbreviated to "wiki").
A wiki is Web-based software that provides live document editing
via the Web. In fact, a wiki enables live editing of entire Web
sites, complete with automatic page creation. This level of
freedom can be unsettling, accustomed as we are to the laborious
process of creating, editing, uploading, and modifying Web pages.
It's even more disturbing to think that anyone could edit or even
delete your text. And yet, from what I can gather from reading
wikis and talking to people who use them seriously, such textual
vandalism seldom happens.
The main reason is akin to why open source works - social pressure
to fit into the group. Other protection mechanisms exist as well.
Every version of a wiki page is saved (efficiently, through the
use of diffs that record just changes between versions) so you can
always go back to a pre-vandalized version. Plus, some wikis
provide IP-range and password security to individual pages so, for
instance, everyone can read a page, but only some people can make
changes. Another option lets only authorized people edit a page,
but allows anyone to add comments to the end.
Another aspect of wikis that tends to throw people is that
formatting is minimal. Wikis aim to promote communication, not
layout. The level of formatting varies between wikis, but there
are usually simple wiki-specific formatting rules (like turning
lines starting with asterisks into bulleted lists, turning lines
of several dashes into horizontal rules, and so on). Many wikis
also support HTML markup, though most people don't bother since
it's seldom worth the effort. Some wikis support graphics, but
it's safe to say that most primarily contain text.
**Using Wikis** -- The original WikiWikiWeb was created by Ward
Cunningham, but I've found that site's explanations overly
abstract and disorganized. It's interesting to browse around in
Ward's original wiki, though I'll warn you that it's easy to
become brain-boggled in the process.
<http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb>
Since the wiki software itself is open source, a vast number of
wiki clones have arisen, written in a wide variety of languages
and running on a wide variety of platforms. Some even provide free
wiki space to all comers, so you can set up your own wiki for
testing or document collaboration, such as on the WikiWeb site
(where they also sell wiki software for intranet use).
<http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiClones>
<http://www.wikiweb.com/>
I used the WikiWeb site to collect questions for the annual
Netters Dinner Survey at Macworld Expo this year. People could
read the existing questions, and then either edit them (to add new
answers, for instance) or add new questions. It worked relatively
well for gathering a base set of questions which I used when
emceeing the obligatory raise-your-hands survey. I've also set up
another page on WikiWeb where I originally encouraged people from
TidBITS Talk to explore and post comments - it showed me that
wikis are too free-form for discussions, since comments can be
added anywhere and there's no indication of when comments were
made or (sometimes) who made them. Where wikis shine is creation
and editing of documents, and so you can see what it would be
like, I've uploaded this entire article to the WikiWeb site as
well.
<http://www.wikiweb.com/~NettersDinnerSurvey>
<http://www.wikiweb.com/~TidBITSWiki/TidBITSWikiComments>
<http://www.wikiweb.com/~TidBITSWiki/DocumentCollaborationArticle>
I've had more experience with XNSORG's internal wiki (we hope to
open it up soon) for developing and reviewing content. Pages start
in one of two ways - either essentially blank or relatively
complete. For instance, we're talking about new content for our
home page right now, so I created a page (page creation is merely
a matter of naming the page and clicking a link) and roughed in
some text. My goal is not to do all the work on the first pass
myself, but to put enough material up there that others, when I
send them the URL to that page, will be jogged into adding text,
making changes, or perhaps just making comments. Plus, I can make
changes any time I want without needing to distribute new
versions. This approach can work well for starting a document no
one desperately wants to create, since it spreads the workload. In
this case, someone always ends up taking responsibility for the
document, which entails copy editing, checking links, and tweaking
the formatting.
At other times it makes more sense to take a mostly completed
document and put it up on a wiki page for review and editing. This
approach can save time for the person primarily responsible for
the document, since the people reviewing often find and fix minor
errors and can add or modify explanations as appropriate. This
doesn't eliminate the need for the author to do the final edit
pass, but it remains a flexible way to collect comments and
changes without maintaining or distributing multiple versions.
Other uses we've found for the wiki include an easy way to publish
working group meeting minutes without the effort of building and
posting traditional Web pages, an open agenda to which all members
of a working group can add items, "road map" documents which
change frequently, and to-do lists for members of working groups.
Overall, I'd say the wiki is a great success, and we're still
thinking of ways to use it. For instance, once we can open it up
to the public, we'd like to use it for FAQs, so people could ask
questions and we could answer them, right on the same page as all
the others while avoiding the slow process of revising and posting
traditional HTML documents in a group setting.
**Wiki on the Mac** -- Although I found the public WikiWeb site, I
wanted to see about running a wiki on a Mac. Most wikis are
written in nominally cross-platform languages like Java or Perl,
but I have neither the time nor the expertise to get them running
on a Mac. Then I was alerted to the existence of Swiki, which was
written in a Smalltalk variant called Squeak, developed initially
as a research project at Apple (the developers reportedly followed
Alan Kay to Disney). Swiki (I can't believe they missed naming it
SqWiki, or "squeaky") requires its own Web server, called
Comanche, and you can download and install the complete package
for free. It wasn't hard - just follow the instructions on the
second link below (since the instructions themselves are on a
wiki, I did some editing in the one place I found them confusing).
<http://pbl.cc.gatech.edu/myswiki>
<http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/swiki/16>
I haven't tested it under any strain, but it seems to work on my
PowerBook G3 (other than email notification of changed pages).
I've also been impressed with Swiki's feature set - although I'm
by no means experienced with wikis, Swiki seems to offer
significantly more features in terms of formatting and access
controls than many other implementations. If you like playing with
Internet servers, Swiki is definitely worth a look.
Although the PowerBook is a lousy server machine for the simple
reason that I take it offline on occasion, I'm considering testing
Swiki as a way to collaborate with authors on TidBITS article
drafts. The two main drawbacks are that editing tools available in
a Web browser text field are primitive at best, and we'd lose our
internal color coding system if we took the text out of Nisus
Writer. However, I think I can address these criticisms with a
macro that uses Nisus Writer as the editing environment and
translates between Nisus Writer's formatting and Swiki markup.
We'll see how it works, and perhaps I'll end up with an additional
resource in my document collaboration tool kit for future
projects. In the meantime, I hope this series has been helpful in
providing ideas for your own collaboration needs, and make sure to
share other approaches you've used on TidBITS Talk.
$$
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