Enhance Your Video Accessibility with Captionator.js
In today's digital landscape, ensuring that your online videos are accessible to all audiences is
paramount. Captionator.js is a powerful JavaScript polyfill designed to bridge the gap in HTML5 video
captioning, enabling seamless integration of subtitles across various formats.
Seamless Integration with HTML5 Video
Captionator.js acts as a drop-in solution for your existing HTML5 video elements. By providing support
for the <track> element and the TextTrack JavaScript API, it allows you to display
subtitles in multiple formats, including SUB, SRT, YouTube's SBV, WebVTT, and Google's proposed
timestamp syntax. This versatility ensures compatibility with a wide range of video content and
platforms.
Future-Proof Compatibility
As web standards evolve, Captionator.js is committed to staying ahead. Future updates aim to support
additional subtitle formats such as LRC, DFXP/TTML, and the WebVTT v2 proposed features. This
forward-thinking approach ensures that your video content remains accessible as browser support for
these standards becomes widespread.
Easy Implementation and Customization
Implementing Captionator.js is straightforward. Simply include the polyfill in your project, and it will
automatically detect and enable <track> elements specified in your video markup. This
ease of use allows you to focus on creating engaging content without worrying about complex coding
requirements.
Moreover, Captionator.js provides a JavaScript API in line with the WHATWG's specification, offering
flexibility for developers to create custom interfaces for selecting assistive or media enhancement
tracks. This level of customization ensures that your video player aligns with your brand's unique
requirements.
Commitment to Open Source and Community
As an open-source project, Captionator.js encourages community involvement. Developers can contribute to
its growth by following the progress of the CaptionPlanet branch on GitHub. This collaborative approach
fosters innovation and ensures that the tool continues to meet the evolving needs of the digital
community.
In conclusion, Captionator.js is an essential tool for any developer or content creator looking to
enhance the accessibility and reach of their video content. By integrating this polyfill, you ensure
that your videos are inclusive, engaging, and future-ready.
Video Captioning in HTML5
At first glance, video captioning might not seem like a huge deal. Maybe it might appeal to you
if you need to meet accessibility requirements in your workplace, or you're just doing it to be nice to
people with hearing difficulties.
You're pretty far from the mark though. Yes, accessibility is an important driver for video captioning
on the web.
But it's about much more than ‘deaf
people’
(and
you should be providing quality captioning for them anyway!)
In addition to important accessibility benefits, captioning your video can allow automatically
generated
transcripts, text search-ability within videos (imagine what will be possible once Google supports
crawling
WebVTT!), chapter markers and powerful metadata capability,
and much more!
You could provide a track of time-specific comments on the video (the same way SoundCloud
allows commenting on specific parts of audio) or even a live twitter feed on your video (similar in
style to the
ABC'S Q&A program.)
“Alright!”, you say. “I'm convinced. How does HTML5 allow me to
caption my video?”
For a while, there wasn't an easy way to do it. Guys like Bruce Lawson were coming up with
creative ways (if a little hacky)
to implement support, in lieu of a proper standard.
Now, however, there's a really nice way to provide support - the HTML5 <track>
element and its
associated JavaScript
API. There's a slight catch though. No currently shipping browser supports
either of these features/standards.
They will soon - Webkit has support in development, and
Firefox can now parse the <track> element (but can't do anything with it yet.)
But you want to caption your HTML5 video now. And for that, you need Captionator.js.
Captionator.js
Captionator.js is a JavaScript polyfill
designed to provide support for the <track> element and TextTrack javascript API. It
currently
supports subtitles in SUB, SRT,
Youtube's SBV, WebVTT, and
WebVTT with Google's proposed timestamp syntax. It will soon
support
LRC, DFXP/TTML and the
WebVTT v2 proposed features.
Like most polyfills, it's intended to be a drop-in addition to your existing HTML5 video (and/or custom
player)
and provides a JavaScript API in line with the WHATWG's
specification. This makes it easy to write your own interface for allowing the user to select assistive
or
media enhancement tracks, and when browsers land support for the feature, it'll move out of the way and
let the browser
take over (and you won't have to change a line of code!)
Captionator.js will automatically detect and enable <track> elements specified in
markup - it's a totally
painless solution! See the Captionator.js documentation to get started!
Captionator.js Out & About
-
Captionator was recently recommended and demonstrated by Jer Noble of Apple at WWDC 2011!
Check out Session 502: Advanced HTML5 Media Controllers.
(Unfortunately, you'll need to sign up for a free Apple Developer account - it's
a great video though!.)
-
Silvia Pfeiffer presented on WebVTT to an audience at GoogleIO
in March this year, and used Captionator.js for the demo. This is a great talk for getting your head
around WebVTT
as a format.
CaptionPlanet
CaptionCrunch, the old development release, is now stable!
CaptionPlanet is the next stage frontier in the
Captionator.js roadmap.
At this stage, intended to be the 0.6 release milestone, the goal for CaptionPlanet
is performance, compatibility, better testing, and broader format support.
Some things which slipped from the 0.5 CaptionCrunch release (in the
interests of getting
the new Captionator.js WebVTT renderer out the door) will be delivered in CaptionPlanet
instead, namely:
- Support for WebVTT inline styles (Captionator currently parses these, but does nothing with them)
- Enabling support for cue styles in page stylesheets
- LRC (and possibly SSA/ASS, depending on whether the current renderer will support the formats)
subtitle support
This release is slightly less ambitious than 0.5 CaptionCrunch, but
every bit as important.
As Captionator.js is an open source project, you can
see all these new features come to fruition in real time by following progress of the
CaptionPlanet
branch on github! Just be aware that things might not always be pretty, or even work.