DEAF CON [ Copy of t=13487 ]

[TheCotMan]

Re: DEFCON CnE listing

We were pleased recently when DEAF CON was listed on the official CnE site. arose4beni even tweeted about it from our official account.

Now it appears we are no longer listed. Is this because DEFCON needs to distance themselves from this effort for legal reasons? Is there some other reason? I don't actually know who runs the CnE page and if it's an official or unofficial site in regard to the con.

We're totally fine if things were pulled for legal / CYA reasons (we understand how difficult the ADA makes all of this) but we just want to be sure we're not stepping on toes or causing problems.

Any word, here or via PM, would be helpful.

First, Pyr0 and his crew run the http://defcne.net/e/21 site and pages. The forums will follow what he has up and other goons that have authority to create contests or events at DEF CON. I have plans to re-visit his list this weekend -- too busy with 16+ hour work days plus commute, plus working the last 3 weekends. This Saturday will be my first day off in a long while to spend the time it will take to sync forum lists with latest lists, and then announce forums on twitter and elsewhere.

Second, *several* contests and events have moved from public to private, and many have moved back again. (To know why each did this, you'll have to check with Pyr0, as I'd bet each one that appeared, disappeared and changed again were caused by different things.) He would have a reason why. He may need more information, or there may be a conflict or there may be some other reason.

Last, I *just* heard back from Pyr0 about 1 day ago (estimating) after sending email about 1 week ago, and he said he too has been really busy these last two weeks, working on other things. I'm not sure he will reply here any time soon. He might be in a similar boat with his work. Maybe he will be able to reply this weekend, too.

If you had a question about the forums, I would be happy to answer that.

Thanks!
-Cot

[Deviant Ollam]

DEFCON CnE listing

We were pleased recently when DEAF CON was listed on the official CnE site. arose4beni even tweeted about it from our official account.

Now it appears we are no longer listed. Is this because DEFCON needs to distance themselves from this effort for legal reasons? Is there some other reason? I don't actually know who runs the CnE page and if it's an official or unofficial site in regard to the con.

We're totally fine if things were pulled for legal / CYA reasons (we understand how difficult the ADA makes all of this) but we just want to be sure we're not stepping on toes or causing problems.

Any word, here or via PM, would be helpful.

[arose4beni]

Re: DEAF CON

We also have a Google+ page to reach out to the various communities there as well.

Does anyone else know of other communities or websites we could reach out and spread the word about DEF CON?

[arose4beni]

Re: DEAF CON

Just a small update:

We now have a Facebook page to help reach out to DEAF/HoH community. :)

[dod1450]

Re: DEAF CON

I am very happy to see this. For I am hearing impaired in the last 8 years. I have not master sign language, but getting the hang of lip reading.
My hearing impairment is I am unable to hear a cotton swab touching the entrance to my ear and the other ear a 40% lost in human speech frequencies.

[Knollgrass]

Re: DEAF CON

Now that is an interesting question!

I know in the past we have tried to use ALT tags, keep things simple, but that was not to be more accessible.

I know there are guidelines for making a site easy for text to speech translators, and guidelines for graphics to be color safe for "most" people with certain color blindness, but we've never designed the site to be extra accessible. The last redesign was to make the site light weight, not require java script, and to render on mobile devices by not using frames with fixed pixel widths but to make things variable percentages. The logical step for the next redesign is to take all the previous work and build on it with current accessibility standards. Does anyone have any experience?

So you're talking about 508 compliance. Sounds like you've done most of the heavy lifting; ALT tags and picture meta descriptions. Here's a good checker for the website, it will run a report that you can parse through and see what it caught: http://www.powermapper.com/products/...ity-checks.htm

But to be honest, the best way to get feedback on usability via a screenreader is get a blind person savvy with a computer, give them credentials to access the site and let them play around.

[Dark Tangent]

Re: DEAF CON

With all this great stuff about Defcon and positive accessibility, I wonder, is defcon.org ADA compliant too? Just curious....

Now that is an interesting question!

I know in the past we have tried to use ALT tags, keep things simple, but that was not to be more accessible.

I know there are guidelines for making a site easy for text to speech translators, and guidelines for graphics to be color safe for "most" people with certain color blindness, but we've never designed the site to be extra accessible. The last redesign was to make the site light weight, not require java script, and to render on mobile devices by not using frames with fixed pixel widths but to make things variable percentages. The logical step for the next redesign is to take all the previous work and build on it with current accessibility standards. Does anyone have any experience?

[Knollgrass]

Re: DEAF CON

To answer your question russ, so far we have two interpreters who would be willing to volunteer their time for on-floor interpretation: Knollgrass and his friend. DEAF CON would need to raise funds to get them out to DEF CON. You can contact him if you have any questions. He would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

Hey everyone,

arose4beni is right, if anyone wants an insider voice on the Deaf community or implementation of accommodations I'm a good guy to talk to. While it is contrary to Defcon culture for things to be centrally planned, Dark Tangent and the others are correct in making the decision to manage this in-house. I'm confident they will tap community resources, it's just a wiser approach getting this off the ground. Also, I share DT's sentiment, the more Deaf people we get to come the better. I'll start getting out the word to my Deaf friends.

On the note of attending Defcon, I'm still hoping to attend regardless. Turns out one of my cousins is going and I've got a free room (or I could stay with a couple friends that are going). But I'd like, rather than just attending, to put my skills to work interpreting.

Also, Deviant is correct in trying to be considerate of the Deaf community's preferences and yes those probably are using interpreters. In our proposal I talked about using 'float interpreter', used to complement the CART offering. Basically one or two interpreters who volunteer their time to interpret for either interactions with staff or participation in things you cannot caption like the Villages. I agree with the Brass on using CART captioning on the basis that it is the MOST strategic move to make. It's the beginning of a good thing.

[arose4beni]

Re: DEAF CON

Here is an update, and we will want to spread the news:

I have signed a contract with a company to scribe all the speaking tracks as well as the closing ceremony in english.

What does this mean? It means for the third time in DEF CON history we will officially be supporting the hearing impaired. This time around it will be with real time scribing appearing on screen, much like what you would see if you had captioning turned on your TV. There will be the camera video and at the bottom there will be superimposed the text of what the speakers are saying.

Once we release our presentations we will qualify to use the materials in Universities and other places that require materials taught in school to support subtitles. This will make DEF CON unique in the hacker con space as far as I know.

So with that all said I would hate to go through all the work and expense and only have two security ninjas who are hearing impaired attend. Let's promote this far and wide, and over the next couple years try and include as many as possible. The last time we did translation two years in a row we had two or three people the first, and none the second. Let's see if we can do better this time!

The Dark Tangent

Awesome!! Thanks for the update Dark Tangent!!

I'm sure within the coming days we will use every avenue possible to reach out to the Deaf/HH community.

[arose4beni]

Re: DEAF CON

If you visit https://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-goons.html and search for keyword "info" you should be able to find several goons with "info" and "booth" as part of their title. These would be people you could start with. They may be able to direct you to best person to help you with this. One you might try first is FAWCR. Email is spelled out as part of "contact."

Hope this helps,
-Cot

Great! Thank you for the information as always Cot.

[TheCotMan]

Re: DEAF CON

With all this great stuff about Defcon and positive accessibility, I wonder, is defcon.org ADA compliant too? Just curious....

There is a whole other thing that addresses that. Google search for "Section 508 Compliance" and it is not as simple as just making sure there is text for everything.

Table in HTML support this thing that labels each column and row, but it is often not used. Those lables are often used by text to speech tools to "read" content and the labels add context to the content of a cell in a table. There is much more to it than this. I am even less a Section 508 expert than I am an expert on subtitles, and my experience with subtitles is working them for movies I liked, not as a professional.

[astcell]

Re: DEAF CON

With all this great stuff about Defcon and positive accessibility, I wonder, is defcon.org ADA compliant too? Just curious....

[TheCotMan]

Re: DEAF CON

Here is an update, and we will want to spread the news:

I have signed a contract with a company to scribe all the speaking tracks as well as the closing ceremony in english.

What does this mean? It means for the third time in DEF CON history we will officially be supporting the hearing impaired. This time around it will be with real time scribing appearing on screen, much like what you would see if you had captioning turned on your TV. There will be the camera video and at the bottom there will be superimposed the text of what the speakers are saying.

There are some benefits to this, and I have some questions for everyone.
- We will get cleaned up files after the con for each speech, allowing us to also post the presentation text. This should help get the content better indexed in search engines.

Here are the questions:
1 - We will have the text from the speeches, but there are many ways to sync it to the videos. I believe Cot is quite experienced with the issues, but it boils down to picking time based or frame based subtitle methods.
2 - Once we have picked a subtitle method we will need to create the sub file from the transcripts. How do you do this?
3 - Pick a video file format that will support subtitles. My goal is to have it work on the maximum number of devices. .mkv? Is there a way to get subtitles to show up on iPads and such? Dues YouTube like subtitle files in a certain format?
4 - Assemble a team to help implement all of this stuff. If you have knowledge and want to help out please speak up!

Once we release our presentations we will qualify to use the materials in Universities and other places that require materials taught in school to support subtitles. This will make DEF CON unique in the hacker con space as far as I know.

So with that all said I would hate to go through all the work and expense and only have two security ninjas who are hearing impaired attend. Let's promote this far and wide, and over the next couple years try and include as many as possible. The last time we did translation two years in a row we had two or three people the first, and none the second. Let's see if we can do better this time!

The Dark Tangent

There are many ways to do subtitles. Some terms to use here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitl...oning%29#Types

When you rip a DVD, you can get 8-bit data from DVD with subtitles to display using the DVD-stored font and font-style to overlay on video as, "Prerendered," and can make mkv containers with each of these 8-bit subtitle files, and then choose which subtitle to display.

For making your own subtitles, there are two common formats for "softsub".

A disadvantage with softsub subtitles is it is then up to the player's built-in fonts and font style choices to display subtitles, and not all players support this, but many do support this.

Once you have softsub subtitles, you can use programs like mencoder to create a new video that "burns" the mencoder-font-and-font-style-generated subtitles into the resulting video, creating "a resulting with with "hardsubs"




Next, for softsubs, there are two common methods for synchronizing subtitle text with the right time to appear on screen.
* Frame-based
* Time based

From these, there are sometimes different ways to specify each such as within {} or [] or other form of punctuation.

They usually include a "start" time or frame number, and then and "end" time or frame number, followed by a whitespace and the text to display.

Some time or frames are usually required as a buffer between the ending of one subtitle and the begin of the next. Best estimate? 10-30 frames or about 1 second. Less than this, and you can have subtitles overlayed on subtitles without an intermediate "wipe"




Frame-based subtitles lend themselves very well to shifting forward or back to get them to sync, but these do not work with video formats that don't generate "frames" like those in most AVI containers.

Time-based subtitles work based on time, not frame-rate, so as long at the length of time is not changed by later re-encoding of videos with different frame rates, these can be more reliable, but shifting time to match videos that have been edited requires a little more work.

mplayer, and xine for linux support softsub.

vlc player for windows supports softsubs.

vlc player for mac probably support subtitles, but I have not tested it.

Other players support it without obvious methods to enable or configure it.

The common method to select a subtitles file for a video is start with the extension-removed filename:

my_defcon_video_name.avi

so the name of this file minus extension is "my_defcon_video_name"

Save your manually created subtitles text file with frame-count index or time-index as:

my_defcon_video_name.sub

Place both files in the same folder, and then tell your video player to play the video. Those that support these files will often discover the paired subtitle file, and start with them included on screen or give you a menu or keyboard option to enable them.

If we can get a method to convert these "softsub" subtitles into "prerendered" then we can have multiple language subtitles (one file each) and make an "mkv" container with multiple audio tracks and multiple subtitles that can be user-selected. These seem to work in many of the video players I use, and I can choose which audio track and subtitle to use. They even work on the Western Digital Media player I have.


I am not an expert on this topic. I've made subtitles for videos I like.

If you are a perfectionist, you can spend a LOT of time finely getting the synchronization of the appearance of subtitles to match the words as they are spoken, and then upgrade subtitles to include comments for "hard of hearing or deaf" inside other on-screen symbols like:

This is a picture of my exploit

[audience member] Is that from your attack on the Gibson?

[audience laughs]

No. That was a movie and a work of fiction. Also? Dongs.

Content inside "[]" or other symbols can help describe content in audio that is not text. use of italics or other font-styles can describe someone speaking off-screen. There are many ways to take advantage of these features to present your text, and you can waste... err... spend hours and hours to refine the subtitles.

For foreign language films, translation of signs in video is often attempted, using another container or style of font to indicate the text you see is from a sign, and not a human speaking.

Important thing is to agree on how to use these and be consistent with the text we generate in subs.

Hope this helps as an intro to subtitling. If we have anyone that does this as a professional, or more than a few movies as a "fan" please offer your ideas and thoughts on this.

Thanks!
-Cot

[elkentaro]

Re: DEAF CON

So with that all said I would hate to go through all the work and expense and only have two security ninjas who are hearing impaired attend. Let's promote this far and wide, and over the next couple years try and include as many as possible. The last time we did translation two years in a row we had two or three people the first, and none the second. Let's see if we can do better this time!

The Dark Tangent

I'm sure the not so English proficient crowd will enjoy the transcripts too. I have many friends expressing the difficulty of following the talks because of the talking speed of the speakers.
So transcripts would help many other , not only the hearing impaired.

[Dark Tangent]

Re: DEAF CON

Here is an update, and we will want to spread the news:

I have signed a contract with a company to scribe all the speaking tracks as well as the closing ceremony in english.

What does this mean? It means for the third time in DEF CON history we will officially be supporting the hearing impaired. This time around it will be with real time scribing appearing on screen, much like what you would see if you had captioning turned on your TV. There will be the camera video and at the bottom there will be superimposed the text of what the speakers are saying.

There are some benefits to this, and I have some questions for everyone.
- We will get cleaned up files after the con for each speech, allowing us to also post the presentation text. This should help get the content better indexed in search engines.

Here are the questions:
1 - We will have the text from the speeches, but there are many ways to sync it to the videos. I believe Cot is quite experienced with the issues, but it boils down to picking time based or frame based subtitle methods.
2 - Once we have picked a subtitle method we will need to create the sub file from the transcripts. How do you do this?
3 - Pick a video file format that will support subtitles. My goal is to have it work on the maximum number of devices. .mkv? Is there a way to get subtitles to show up on iPads and such? Dues YouTube like subtitle files in a certain format?
4 - Assemble a team to help implement all of this stuff. If you have knowledge and want to help out please speak up!

Once we release our presentations we will qualify to use the materials in Universities and other places that require materials taught in school to support subtitles. This will make DEF CON unique in the hacker con space as far as I know.

So with that all said I would hate to go through all the work and expense and only have two security ninjas who are hearing impaired attend. Let's promote this far and wide, and over the next couple years try and include as many as possible. The last time we did translation two years in a row we had two or three people the first, and none the second. Let's see if we can do better this time!

The Dark Tangent