Partners of the European Commission co-funded HBB4All project met in Paris earlier this month to coordinate the work they are performing to make HbbTV content more accessible.
The meeting was held in the perifery of the 14th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs. This annual event showcases the latest accessibility innovations and is an ideal place for researchers, industry and users to exchange experiences and synchronise on requirements.
The ICCHP conference in Paris, 11 July 2014
Piloting new services
The HBB4All project plans to pilot several new access services in the course of 2015, including tests of new subtitling technology:
- A multi-platform (incl. HbbTV) subtitle production workflow;
- HbbTV-based VoD services allowing users to customize subtitles;
- An HbbtV-based news service with automatically translated live subtitles
EBU Members RBB (Berlin-Brandenburg), IRT (Germany), SwissTXT, RTP (Portugal) and TVC (Catalonia), play a central role in allowing tests to be performed on a large scale.
Besides subtitling, the HBB4All project includes work on alternative audio production & distribution, automatic adaptation of ‘intelligent’ TV applications and sign language translation. The project builds on open standards (such as EBU-TT) and will provide detailed test results in the course of its 3-year mandate.