Several weeks ago I submitted this petition at the Number 10 website:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to: 'add subtitles to all multimedia content online produced by Number 10, & respective government departments'Downing Street currently has video content streamed on YouTube, with links from the Number 10 website.
Which streams content presented by the Prime Minister. However it carries no subtitles.
Deaf and hard of hearing people cannot access this content. Thus marginalised and not part of an 'inclusive society;.
This petition is for Downing Street to comply with the DDA and actually make all its online content accessible.
Furthermore, it calls on the government to encourage other service providers to subtitle content online, by setting an example.
This was submitted at the time the new French Prime Minister went into office, as I had found the YouTube link via the BBC website (Tony Blair congratulating the new President).
A couple of weeks later, this petition was returned to me rejected, as it had contained a link! The link happened to be the relevant page on the Number 10 website. So I resubmitted the petition, just deleting the line for the link.
The petition has now been rejected again, and I've received this reply:
Films also appear here where they carry subtitles where appropriate.Your petition will now appear in the list of rejected petitions.
I've quickly looked at this page, and I don't see any subtitled content. I don't have time to look in more depth right now, and would appreciate anyone finding it, letting us know where it is.
Whatever. When the original petition was submitted, there was no subtitled content (that at least one could find) on that website, because I really looked. To me it looks like 3-4 weeks later they've tried to get their act together (that's assuming there's subtitles on the site).
This pisses me off, because it comes across as spin the government not wanting to admit its mistakes, and secondly, why should I even have to flag this and its not done as a matter of course?
Why can't YouTube be subtitled anyway, why do we have to search for the accessible version? What does "where appropriate" mean anyhow?
Comments (3)
"appropriate" - what this means is that should [insert favourite enemy nation such as Russia, China, Iran, USA etc] start launching missles to UK, they don't have the time to subtitle the video to warn us, so while all hearing people outside are running around screaming, we wouldn't have a clue why...so we die happy as it wouldn't be "appropriate" to waste time on subtitling a video.
Quite reasonable after all.
That any help? ;)
(Rest of world - this is a sarcastic comment)
Posted by JGJones | May 23, 2007 2:22 PM
This is from the SAME people that don't subtitle their own vblogs and objected to people asking for it ? geesh !!
Posted by MM | May 25, 2007 2:39 PM
Just one one point..I think it's completely unrealistic to assume that Youtube will subtitle the vids..after all it's not Youtube that creates the content, it's the users. Not everyone knows how to, and for those that do, it does take a lont time to time the captions corectly.
I'm meaning tog et vids going back on Youtibe again and captioned but the problem is I can record..vista doesn't agree with my in built cam driver..the irony!
Posted by Jippers | May 28, 2007 3:30 PM