Web-Based Media Player Accessibility Comparison Table

This table is developed and maintained by the Commitee on Institutional Cooperation Information Technology Accessibility Group (CIC ITAG) Media Player Accessibility sub-group. Some of its accessibilty criteria is borrowed from the Media Accessibility User Requirements (MAUR), a W3C Working Group Note, and it maps its criteria to that document. References and comments are in expanding “View Details” sections associated with table cells.

This table scores web-based media players against criteria which assess both the accessibility of the players and their usability with regard to general usage and deployment. The goal is to allow for head-to-head comparison of web-based media players. The critera in the table attempt to identify commonly implemented, practical, and desirable features, bearing on the accessibility of the media players for users with disabilities, while also providing some insight into general end-user usability and fitness for implementing the players within a variety of web environments.

Criteria are listed down the left column. Each is given a priority (based on work done by the CIC ITAG sub-group) and is mapped to the MAUR. Not all criteria have a reference in the MAUR, and not all MAUR are referenced in this table. The MAUR is more comprehensive with regard to accessibility. MAUR criteria also tend to be more specific, whereas this comparison table may combine multiple MAUR criteria into a single functional criterion. The HTML Accessibility Task Force maintains a Media Accessibility Checklist, which maps MAUR criteria to both WCAG 2.0 and UAAG 2.0.

Table Key

Explantions of support levels, priority levels, and other references used in the comparison table.

Support Levels

• Supported

  The media player supports this functionality.

• Not Supported

  The media player does not support this functionality.

• Partial Support

  The media player has partial support for this functionality.

• Unknown Support

  It is not known if the media player supports this functionality. This is either because the player has not been tested or the functionality cannot be or has not yet been determined.

• Not Applicable

  Support for the functionality is not applicable to the player or a particular aspect/feature of the player, due to some factor. For example, if a player does not support viewing an associated transcript, then the other criteria related to viewing a transcript will be marked as Not Applicable.

Priority Levels

• priority one

  Indicates that the functionality criterion is required. For example, closed captions functionality is a requirement for accessibility, and support for full screen playback is a usability requirement.

• priority two

  Indicates that the functionality criterion is highly desirable. For example, the ability for a user to be able to adjust the size of the caption text is highly desirable for accessibilty but not required (since in most cases the operating system will be able to assist in magnification).

• priority three

  Indicates that the functionality criterion is desirable. For example, the ability for a user to toggle between pop-on, roll-up, and paint-on caption display styles would likely benefit particular users, but the lack of such functionality is unlikely to prevent accessibility.

• priority four

  Indicates that the functionality criterion is aspirational, something that would likely be desirable when technology is available to implement it. For example, there are technical hurdles to programatically achieve audio filtering in web media players in ways that work across platforms, though such filtering could be very beneficial to users who have certain kinds of hearing loss. Likewise, with regard to usability, support for new extensions or protocols for streaming and securing HTML5 video currently differ in implementation across browsers and working examples are hard to come by. Thus these sorts of functional criteria are marked for the “future.”

Other Tags

• MAUR Requirement: DV-7

  Provides a link to the a specific requirement or category of requirements from the Media Accessibility User Requirements document. To save on space (and limit screen reader chatter) if there is a specific requirement that relates to a criterion, often we will omit reference to the broader category of requirements that the specific criterion falls within.

• Category: u7y

  Indicates that the criterion is categorized as relating to the usability of the media player. This table has 41 criteria related to usability, some of which have an accessibility impact as well. We use the term usability in a very broad sense, involving not only general ease of use and feature availability for end users but also fitness for deployment in the variety of web environments.

• Category: a11y

  Indicates that the criterion is categorized as relating to the accessibility of the media player. This table has 32 criteria that are categorized solely as related to accessibility.

Contributing Testing Results

This is an open source project and invites the contribution of testing results from users who have knowledge of the accessibility or usability of the players in the table and/or who have experience testing for accessibility with assistive technologies. Contributors should submit a pull request to the project. Changes in the request will be merged after they have been verified. Contributors may also suggest the addition other web-based media players. Since we want to keep the focus on accessibility, a new media player will only be added if it has accessibility as a central goal or if it has wide enough usage to make comparison to other players useful to the web development and user communities. Further criteria will only be added on rare occassions and only after review by the CIC ITAG.

Contributors should familiarize themselves with the table code and contributions should conform to indentation styles and other idiosyncrasies. The table code is written to be self-documenting and allow for easy updating. Find this project on GitHub. Use the Issues tracker for communications.

Content Filters

*Planned for the near future:* the ability to filter the display of player columns (by player) and criteria rows (by category).