Is it a legal requirement to put video signing for deaf people on explanatory documents on new websites?

Answer 1

No, it is not.

The internet doesn't have one single regulatory body, ICANN and other bodies regulate domain names and other aspects of websites and website structure, and there would be huge problems in creating a rule like that, (more on that in a moment) BUT there are rules in the creation of web pages to make them accessible to disabled and people with impairments (such as blindness and other impairments), these rules are set within HTML/XHTML and different versions have different rules (see W3C website http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for more information regarding these rules), and these are 'hardcoded' into the HTML to give browsers/software instructions on how to display a page for various types of media (such as a screen reader).

The problem you are going to have with creating a legal requirement is that it is only enforceable within the country that made the rule. Does this mean that if the website is held in a country where the law is made, should it be enforced outside?

On top of this is that there just isn't the technology to provide an 'on the fly' signing application. You would need software to listen to and then translate each statement as a visual image/subtitle and even automatic subtitling isn't all that (its actually coded at the TV station - sometimes by a person using a shorthand machine - like a court stenographer or as auto subtitling software- and then sent as a signal to the TV, not coded in the TV), and even then the actual result is around about 90 - 95% correct - but those incorrect words make the difference.

However it is within the boundaries for a site to voluntarily add subtitles to videos within a site and You Tube are doing just this. This may be justifiable to a large firm and are well within the ability's of a single person creating a fan page (they can use software to create their own subtitles) but what about small business that have sites with dynamic video content, would the expense of providing subtitles be supportable?

The actuality of uploading signed videos is unlikely too for instance, if you have a new site similar to You Tube, how would you ensure that every video uploaded to the server has a secondary signing video? And if subtitling, in what language should you provide subtitles? English only? if we go by the number of spoken languages per capita, then we would all have to learn Chinese!

Please do not think that because I am pointing out the difficulties in this statement that I don't think its a good idea. I just think that technology needed to implement it just isn't available at the moment.

Ref:

Accessibility and W3C rules:

http://www.w3.org/WAI/

Domain name regulations

www.icann.org/

You Tube add Subtitles to videos:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8369941.stm

Automatic Subtitle creation:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F4573132%2F4573133%2F04573173.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4573173&authDecision=-203