BBC Wales is running a campaign called,Capture Wales. This is a “digital storytelling” project, and members of the public can submit short videos about matters important to them. There are a wide variety of interesting stories, from anecdotes about a father’s fifteen minutes of fame, to Lyndon Wray’s recollections of the natural beauty of North Wales.

All of these short films carry subtitles, and many also have transcripts. Whether you are Welsh or not, so long as you are interested in people, then a lot of these short clips are worth dipping into.

It is a similar story on the Film Network website, where up and coming filmmakers showcase their short films. These include animation, comedy, drama and more experimental films, and there is plenty to interest everyone. Well worth checking out is God & Dave, a short film about relationships, traffic jams, and whales. No, really.

Both of these websites also provide plenty of help in setting up your media player to show subtitles, and you can also provide feedback on them if you want to help the service even better.

Signs of Life is well worth checking out as well. This is an interactive online occult thriller with games threaded throughout the story.

It has everything that the sullen, moody, emo listening teenager could want. There’s romance, creepy twins, skulls, tarot, astrology and, er, a rather sinister stalker. Games range from simple exercises like uncovering energy lines in the ground, to psychometric-like tests to reveal your personality.

And to think, when I was a kid, interactive meant making stuff along with Blue Peter. Kids today don’t know they’re born, etc etc.

It is subtitled as well, which is pretty cool. We’ve looked at a few interactive online experiences before, like HBO’s Voyeur (why are they all so dark?) and bemoaned the lack of inclusivity. So it is good to see something like Signs of Life that is making the effort.

If I have one criticism of the subtitles, it would be that in the first episode, sometimes a different colour is used to show different speakers, and sometimes that wasn’t the case. By the second episode, though, that issue appears to have been resolved.

I would also like to see a way to skip the games. Now I know that sounds counter-intuitive when it comes to inter-activity, but Signs of Life is interesting enough for people to want to watch it without them. And if, for example, you can’t see the dots to join them up in order to progress to the second half of the first episode, well then, you’re a bit stuffed.

But lets not get too critical here. Signs of Life is the BBC’s first major interactive experiment of this nature, and as grand as it is, they are bound to learn from it for similar future projects. And I’ll look forward to seeing what they come up with next.

What makes this so exciting? Well, according to the RNIB, only 5% of all materials available to sighted users are also provided in an alternative accessible format.

And whilst documents can be changed into other audio formats easily enough, the resulting file tends to lack structure, like headings. Large, complicated documents can end up being as easy to follow as drunken, freeform jazz. It can be hard enough work wading through a company’s financial reports without this additional complication.

DAISY format documents make things much easier, as the headings, page numbers and references can all be identified by a suitable player. With a proper structure, it suddenly becomes possible to skip chapters and move backwards and forwards through a document.

This is great news, and full credit goes to Microsoft for both developing the plugin and making it free. The big issue will be making people aware that it exists. Hopefully in future releases of Word, the DAISY converter will be installed as standard. Given the popularity of Word, that small step could have a greater impact on making more documents accessible than almost any other measure that could be taken.

Firstly, the hot-off-the-press news concerns audio description for TV programmes. Audio description is an extra narrative voice added to a show to help explain on-screen action for visually impaired viewers. There has been plenty of demand for audio described content, and the good news is that a trial will be launched soon - maybe even this year.

This trial won’t initially take place in the iPlayer. Selected programmes will be audio described and delivered directly from the BBC website. Users will be invited to give feedback on the trial, so there is a good opportunity to get involved and help create the audio description service that you want. Once the testing phase is completed, then audio described content will begin to be integrated into the iPlayer.

Elsewhere, there is news of one or two gremlins in the system that the BBC Future Media and Technology Accessibility Team are feverishly trying to resolve.

There is an issue with displaying subtitles on the “stand alone” version of media players. As we’ve noted before, they work fine on the small screen, and, if your player is correctly set-up (see this iPlayer FAQ if you need help with this) it works fine on the “full screen” version as well. Our advice then is simple – avoid the “stand alone” media player for the time being.

The final glitch that the team are working on is that some programmes are being incorrectly marked as having subtitles when in fact the show doesn’t have them. Now that is potentially annoying. One way around it is to check in the Download Manager during the download process. If a programme does indeed have subtitles, then it will be confirmed here. The issue stems from a problem with the meta data – or information about programmes to you and me - and The Future Media and Technology Accessibility Team are confident of clearing this issue up soon.

Q: What are your favourite websites?

I’ve recently discovered the joys of shopping online. Getting heavy loads of groceries from the supermarkets has been brilliant. I sometimes look up specific news stories on the BBC, but I actually prefer to read a newspaper.

Q: What are your least favourite websites?

Holiday comparison websites. I often find they can be a bit misleading about disabled access. Sometimes the websites say the hotel is wheelchair friendly, and then when you actually phone the hotel, you find out that, for example, there are steps up to the lift or something.

Q: What was the last thing you bought online?

I recently bought a table and chairs online.

Q: What is the most adventurous thing you’ve done online recently?

I booked tickets with Eurostar. They’ve got some great deals at the moment for disabled passengers and their travelling companions.

Q: If the web were taken away from me today…

I would get a lot more done! It isn’t that the web is a problem, but email is the bane of my life. It takes ages to go through them all, and because it is an instant medium, everyone expects an instant response. I much prefer face-to-face communication and still try to send letters rather than email to my constituents.

Q: Do you read any blogs?

I tend to avoid them mainly because the comments so often descend into offensive arguments. I only have so much time, and I would rather read the newspapers.

Q: Do you have a favourite gadget?

I have all the usual gadgets, like a mobile phone and so on, but my favourite thing is my wheelchair carrier for the car, which automatically folds away my wheelchair for me. It makes me independent.

It hasn’t been plain sailing for everyone, so I thought I would answer some of the common questions about using the iPlayer.

How do I install the iPlayer?

It is all change on the iPlayer home page. No longer is there a link to install the iPlayer, as such. All you have to do is register, and try to download a programme. You will then be prompted to install the iPlayer library. Follow the instructions to do that, and you’ll be up and running in no time.

How do I switch off signing?

The short answer is that you can’t right now. To make programmes as inclusive as possible, signed content is made available for download where available. When the iPlayer is formally launched, then the programmes will be provided in different formats, including ones with and without signing.

Where are the audio described programmes?

They are coming! The short answer is that the process of adding audio description to content is still in development. Keep an eye out for audio described shows appearing on the iPlayer in the months ahead.

What’s with kservice.exe?

A lot of people have complained that kservice, which is the program that drives the iPlayer, hogs bandwidth. That’s a problem beyond the scope of this blog, but here’s how I manage it. Most firewalls can be configured so that individual programs must request access to the internet. If it isn’t convenient, don’t let it run. You’ll need to check how to do that with whatever firewall you have installed.

If you have other questions not covered here, feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll do my best to address them. If you cannot wait, or it isn’t an accessibility issue, then don’t forget about the extensive help on the iPlayer website.

Has this left record label fat cats crying into their skinny lattes? Whilst selling CDs is still a multi-billion dollar industry, volumes are continuing to fall and downloads aren’t taking up all the slack. Something is happening and the industry needs to react. But in what direction will that be?

If the Radiohead experiment is to be the new model for the industry, then acts will need to sharpen up the way they deliver content to fans. On the Access-UK list, Vanjar gives a full description of the difficulties encountered in trying to download the album after encountering confusing links, a difficult order form and the almost inevitable visual verification image that screen reader software cannot pick up. All of which lead to Vanjar giving the website a, “thumbs down when it comes to accessibility of their online store.”

You know, it still surprises me that people are desperate to spend their money, but that some web developers manage to make it impossible to do so.

A website that has been encouraging users to pay what they like for new music is Magnatune. Magnatune is part record label, part music download website. They sign artists and make their albums available to listen to or download. Consumers get to pay what they want for an album. The recommended price is US $8, but you can pay as little as $5 or as much as $18. The money is split with the band on 50-50 basis.

Magnatune isn’t going to pass a formal accessibility audit, but it is usable. You can navigate around it, and purchasing music involves completing a fairly simple order form. And get this – it even lets you listen to music on your preferred media player, if the Flash player doesn’t work.

It is a model that can work for everyone. Artists prosper by receiving more royalties than with a traditional record label. Consumers get to pay what an album is worth to them.

Could it be that this is how we’ll be buying all our music in the future?

A US District judge in California had found that the e-commerce website of Target, a major chain of department stores, did not provide sufficient accessibility to all user groups, and she ruled that further legal proceedings could go ahead. This has implications for other companies with websites based in California, and perhaps beyond that state. If you are interested in reading more about the case, then Out-Law has a fuller discussion on what it all means.

Techcrunch, a hugely popular technology blog, covered the story in sober fashion, but some of the reactions from readers of the blog have been rather alarming.

There are comments from users displaying great ignorance and bordering on offensive – “what’s next, driver licenses for the blind?” There are even some comments that cross that border, and are too offensive to repeat here.

Most of the more reasoned objections revolve around time and money. These can be countered with well-worn arguments – building an accessible website is no more expensive than an inaccessible one, and an inclusive website reaches a bigger audience and should therefore make more money in the long run.

There is, however, one cultural objection that we don’t often see here in the UK. This is to do with a free market economy. All the answers sums up the argument by saying that, “if Target doesn’t make its website accessible, then Target has made a business decision that it doesn’t care about business from the blind. And that’s their right.”

There is a logic to this, and I can see the argument. But I don’t subscribe to it. I think it is clear that a free market cannot be relied upon to accept its responsibilities, otherwise there would be far more accessible websites around.

What makes this all so noteworthy is that the debate can be found on Techcrunch. It isn’t just some strange outpost in an unfrequented part of the net. Comments are from people interested in, and in some cases, building the cutting edge websites of the internet.

There are accessibility advocates on the thread, so it isn’t a situation without hope. But some of the views expressed by those people who are shaping the web are not greatly encouraging either.

Some of these people need to improve their awareness of both the issues, and solutions. And if it takes legislation to compel them to do it, then so be it.

BBC Collective is a place to keep up to date with the latest happenings in the arts world. Every week, a selection of articles on the latest albums, films and books are published, along with multimedia content like music tracks and interviews. The multimedia content might not be subtitled or transcribed at the moment, but interviews and the like have extensive summaries.

You don’t have to take BBC Collective’s editorial views on the latest releases if you don’t want to. You can write your own reviews, or discuss those of other community members.

You even get your own area – called “my space” which is decidedly more accessible and user-friendly that its more famous namesake.

There, you can write a blog, upload pictures, review CDs, gigs or exhibitions. Anything you like really.

Registration is straightforward – no pesky visual verification images to worry about. There is even extensive audio help available at each stage of the process, recorded from a real live person rather than a synthesised voice. And, er, she’s got a lovely Scots accent…

Sorry. Where was I? Ah yes, once you’ve set up an account you can get involved with the community.

If I have one criticism, then it regards the alt text for images. Not all images have alternative text equivalents, and even when present they aren’t always detailed enough, so following some of the links is a bit of a lucky dip.

The big talking point on BBC Collective regards Radiohead. As you doubtless know, the band has invited fans to pay what they want to download their new album, “In Rainbows”. Which is a really exciting development in ‘music 2.0’.

But the novelty of establishing what a fair price is for the album is causing some head scratching. Perhaps you agree with badgirlswirlgirl who thinks £3.50 is a fair price. Or maybe, like craigthepenguin, you won’t pay anything because you want to buy the CD later. Then again, hybridowl is only paying the admin fee and donating money to the band’s favourite charity instead.

Whatever you make of this discussion, it is well worth checking out BBC Collective.

Bookshare is a not-for-profit organisation that relies upon an army of volunteers to scan books for conversion into either DAISY compatible audio files, or BRF format for Braille readers. Those books are then made available to their members via their website.

Americans have enjoyed Bookshare’s services for years, thanks to an exemption in US copyright law that makes it legal to reproduce books in accessible formats.

There is no equivalent exemption in UK copyright law, so Bookshare must seek permission from UK publishers and authors to reproduce their works in an accessible format.

Although the same range of titles are not yet available to UK users as for those in the US, several thousand books can still be downloaded, from fiction to technical manuals, and the database is only likely to grow with time.

To gain access to Bookshare’s collection of books, users must send them printed proof of their disability.

There is also a registration and annual membership fee of US $75 dollars combined, and with the current exchange rate, that works out at around a pretty modest £37.

Whilst Bookshare offers a great service, don’t think that this in any way lets publishers off the hook from their responsibilities. Scanning is an imperfect process. An ‘S’ might easily become a ‘5’, for example, so some texts can be rendered virtually impossible to follow.

The publishing industry must still make more titles available in accessible formats, and not just feel they are doing their bit by helping out organisations like Bookshare.

All four companies have been trying to work out the best way of captioning – or subtitling to you and me – video for delivery on the web for hearing impaired users. AOL is the latest to have launched a trial.

Now the companies have decided it is better to work together, along with The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), research specialists in the field of media technology for people with disabilities, in order to set up the Internet Captioning Forum (ICF).

The major issues that currently limit subtitled material on the web include the various different formats that films can be delivered in, editing subtitles on programs originally broadcast on TV and perhaps most fundamentally, a lack of clear guidelines for producing subtitled video for the web. The ICF will work to providing answers to all these problems.

Creating standards, producing best practice guidelines and even creating tools that might make it easier to produce subtitled video can only be a good thing, and should lead to a massive increase in accessible content on the web.

If all of that sounds a bit dry and technical, then one of the more tangible outcomes of the project should be anything but that. The ICF plan to create a database of previously subtitled programs, so that there will be one central place to go for subtitled content.

In an unusual step, I’m setting aside my natural cynicism and embracing this as the good news that it is. When you have a situation where Google, Yahoo!, AOL and Microsoft are all working together, then the possibilities could be almost endless. Could it be that ultimately subtitling video will become so easy, that almost all videos on YouTube will have them? This could be an opportunity to radically transform the online video landscape for the better.

Joost has finally come out of a marathon beta testing period and officially launched. This is one of the biggest of the video on demand websites, with more than a million users garnered in that beta testing period. Joost also has deals with in place with companies like Viacom, who are responsible for channels such as Comedy Central and MTV, so there should be plenty of content to view.

I need your help with this one. I’ll be taking an in-depth look at it in the coming weeks, but I want to know your experiences with Joost. Can you get the software to work with your screen reader? Can you find any subtitled programmes? Does its launch mark the dawn of the video on demand age? We want to know what you make of it.

Elsewhere, the British Library has announced that they will be digitising more than 100,000 books. Because of copyright issues, most of these will be unheralded 19th Century books. The first 25 million pages are expected to take two years to scan. The work is being carried out in partnership with Microsoft and will be available via their Live Book Search.

These books will initially be scanned images, and so not accessible to screen reader users and will be difficult to read for those people with poor sight who need to adjust the text size.

As we've noted in previous entries, there is a desperate need for books to be provided in accessible formats to the UK's 2 million people with sight problems. This has to go down as a missed opportunity to make a significant contribution to the number of books available, and provide access to a literary heritage that belongs to everyone.

Although Microsoft's Press office assures us that they will be, "implementing a solution which respects everyone's needs in the future," it will be of little consolation to visually impaired students that might find one of these titles on a university syllabus, or just someone with an interest in 19th Century literature.

To complete the wrap up, Amazon are the latest company to start selling individual songs for download in MP3 format. Providing songs in MP3 format means they can be played on any device, or burnt to a CD. Amazon has traditionally been viewed as a pretty accessible website, so this is another welcome alternative to some of the less inclusive music sites out there.

Andy has cerebral palsy himself and he has had an influential career campaigning for disabled people's rights including being Chief Executive of the British Council of Disabled People and was one of the original authors of the Disabled People's Rights and Freedoms Charter.

In his spare time, Andy enjoys sailing, supporting Cheltenham Town and reading. He is also a lay preacher for the Methodist Church.

Q: What are your favourite websites?

There are many. I like websites to be uncluttered, and the results of a search to be well laid out and easy to read. So I really like dogpile search engine, as I use it to go hunting for stuff or for information. The best for news is the BBC, particularly its business market data section with updated stock market figures. I love my financial adviser's website because I can manage my investments online. Then there is the price comparison website moneysupermarket and the airline tickets website kayak - as you can watch the quotes come in in real time. My most recent godsend is worldweather.org for finding out the weather across the world, which is really useful when planning holidays.

Q: What are your least favourite websites?

There are many as well! The results of a search can take you to lots of commercial websites that are little more than indexes to other websites - a complete waste of time. I loathe busy websites with flashing ads.

Aside from BBC’s Ouch, a lot of websites in the disability world are not very good – there’s not enough interactivity.

Q: What was the last thing you bought online?

Silly Christmas presents from I Want One Of Those, and advance rail tickets for commuting from First Great Western.

Q: If the web was taken away from me today I would…

Struggle to manage both my finances and my shopping in the limited free time I have, as both the phone and having to travel are much less convenient for me as a disabled person.

Q: What's the most adventurous thing you've done on the web recently?

I am trying to build my own website Andy Rickell, and a number of embryonic Christian websites for example, God For Today.

Q: What's your favourite blog?

There are a couple of blogs which I read, such as the ones on BBC Ouch’s website. However, as I don’t have much free time, I tend to use websites instead.

Q: Have you ever heard of Facebook?

Yes, and one day I might get round to investigating it.

Q: Do you have a favourite gadget?

Yes, my PDA/emailer. You know it’s addictive when you’re constantly looking up the latest Hang Seng stock index or Cheltenham Town score!

On the face of it, you would think that websites about words are the perfect candidates to be accessible to everyone – but are they?

First up I took a look at Wordie. This is a social networking website and users can add their favourite words, discuss them, and show where they have been used on other websites.

The website is, as you might expect, largely text based which is good. It does get a little fancier when it comes to registering or logging in. That produced mixed results when tested with some screen readers, though it was fine with JAWS. The appeal of the website lies in the discussions, so to get the most out of it, you’ll have to get involved.

Much more fun to dip into and have a quick look around is My Favourite Word. Users simply enter their favourite words and explain what they like about them. Compared to Wordie, it is a bit less cutting edge, but the content is actually more compelling because the words are often embellished with short anecdotes as to why they are people’s favourite words. Reading that Sheila loves “sagacious”, because she spelled it wrong in a spelling bee as a kid and the consequences that had adds another level of interest.

The My Favourite Word website might not be full of neat web 2.0 tricks, but it is easy enough to get around, and submitting a word can be done via a simple form. So it is pretty accessible to everyone. The words will ultimately be made into a book, so it is a chance to get your name in print. It also shows how user generated websites have changed the way books can be written these days, too.

So a big thumbs up to My Favourite Word. It just goes to show that keeping things simple doesn’t just make a website inclusive, it can be more interesting for it.

My favourite word? Well, since you ask, “onomatopoeia.”

The BBC has just revamped the search tool for the iPlayer Help pages, to ease your journey along the path of enlightenment. You can now check out a list of the most popular questions. Or use the intelligent search facility that offers improved accuracy for the answers.

One question we often hear asked, is how to get subtitles to work when the iPlayer is in Full Screen mode. The answer is that you need to change the settings on the media player to display subtitles, and a step-by-step guide to do that is provided.

Perhaps most importantly of all, you can now rate the quality of the answer you receive. Where instructions to fix an issue are complicated – like changing the settings on the media player – there is always the danger that those instructions won’t be crystal clear to everyone. Supplying the BBC with feedback will help them to give better answers in the future.

I’ve seen enough beta test websites to know that support can be thin on the ground. Ways of giving feedback often doesn’t extent beyond providing an email link. So if you are having problems getting the iPlayer up and running, why not check out the enhanced help facilities.

The Hearing Loss Association of America filed formal complaints with the Federal Communications Commission as it transpires that the iPhone is not compatible with hearing aids or cochlear implants.

Under Section 255 of the US Communications Act, mobile phone manufacturers are required to make devices accessible where this is “readily achievable.”

The iPhone is a phone, a media player and hooks up to the internet. You can browse the web, download and watch video, and listen to music with it. It is the ‘must have’ device of 2007, with more than one million phones sold in the USA since it’s launch in June.

Whilst the iPhone’s touch screen interface – it only has one physical button – has helped to make it so popular, it was always obvious that this was going to make it pretty inaccessible to visually impaired people. But it comes as a bit of a surprise that it isn’t accessible to hearing impaired users either.

Is this the least accessible device ever?!

I don’t want Apple to stop being innovative. Merely inclusive. I don’t want to spoil everyone’s fun. I want everyone to be able to join in with the fun. Hopefully, Apple does as well, and future generations of the iPhone will benefit from the lessons learned so far.