I noticed something at Lotusphere. There was a hearing impaired person in many of the XPages sessions. She was clearly starting to learn XPages. She had two translators who would switch off during the sessions. While it was amazing to watch I found myself wondering if she knew about NotesIn9 and if she was even able to make use of the videos. So I did the only thing I could think of… I asked her. Her name is Carolyn and she was very nice. The first bad news is that she did not know of NotesIn9. That’s a marketing problem I’m working on. The other problem is that she probably can’t make much use of the videos without some kind of sub-titles in them. That’s not something I ever thought about before. When I started asking about subtitles to my friends, some of them, like Serdar, thought it would also be really good for people where English is not a first language. Others seemed to echo this. It seems that for people in other countries it’s easier to read English then hear it. Another revelation that I never considered.
So it seems to me that there’s a potential demand for adding sub-titles to the show. I really have no idea how to add sub-titles to the video feed either for Youtube, or my hosted stuff which is on the website or available via iTunes/RSS for downloading. So I’d need to investigate that. Not sure what happens if the sub-titles conceal pieces of the screen…
Regarding generating the sub titles I THINK there are three ways to do it.
1. There’s a service that does this for $1 per minute. I would certainly try this for a couple of shows, but to do it for every show might get too expensive. I think NotesIn9 is closing in on 7 hours of material….
2. I could try to create subtitles that weren’t a complete translation – but maybe a shortened outline.. not sure the value in that.
3. MAYBE I could find a volunteer to do a fuller translation…
While I’m NOT promising to add subtitles to every show, I am promising to investigate the feasibility.
So my question to anyone who might care is this:
How valuable would adding subtitles be in helping you learn XPages from the NotesIn9 shows?
Any opinions or advice would be appreciated.
Thanks!