HOLMES WILSON (US) Universal Subtitles - Collaborative, Volunteer Subtitling for any Video on the Web Using Free Software

SESSION 2 : PLATFORMS, STANDARDS & THE TROUBLE WITH TRANSLATION CIVIL RIGHTS

Subtitles bridge physical and linguis- tic barriers to video, and for many (especially deaf and hard of hearing users) they are not an option but a necessity. Despite their indispensa- bility, subtitles are not well stand- ardized or prevalent online — the best technical implementations are propri- etary and/or fragmented across online communities. Our goal is to knock down these language and accessibility barriers by building a framework for volunteers to collaboratively subtitle any video on the web. UniversalSub- titles.org is a javascript subtitle creation tool and a community website for wiki-style subtitle creation. It is 100% free and open source, availa- ble under the AGPL license. Users have submitted over 5,000 videos and video publishers who request subtitles from their audience often see translations within 24 hours. This talk will cover the history and mission of Universal Subtitles, give a short tour of Uni- versalSubtitles.org, and discuss where we’re going and how others can help.