If you follow Paul Boag (of the excellent boagworld podcast) on Twitter, you’re well aware that he frequently posts thoughts & insights in short audio clips through AudioBoo.  In one such recent post, he’s sparked a very interesting conversation: on the web, how important is it that everything is 100% accessible?  With his AudioBoo posts, specifically, he wonders how long it will be until someone complains about the format not being as widely accessible as possible.

While the use of speech-to-text technologies is certainly one direction this conversation can go, I’m fascinated by the implementation of crowdsourcing to handle this problem.  To the point: let listeners & fans transcribe the audio content, as they desire, fueled simply by the joy of spreading the ideas and making the content more widely available.  A positive side-effect of this approach is the inevitable additions to the greater conversation; the ideas, thoughts, and insights added to the topic by those doing the trascriptions.

Accordingly, I offer my transcription of Mr. Boag’s latest AudioBoo:

Should Everything Be Accessible?
by boagworld, posted April 17, 2009 at 7:19 am EST

So, I’ve just made a smart-alec comment on Twitter about wondering how long it will take people to complain about these AudioBoos not being accessible.  Somebody said, does that mean everything has to be 100% accessible?  That’s a very good point, and I don’t know the answer to it.  On one hand, my gut-reaction & moral reaction is “hell yes, it does: we have an obligation to make the web as accessible as possible (as it was always intended to be as accessible as possible).” And and my pragmatic, business-hat says “No, not always: there is a limit to how much you can do; you have to justify return-on-investment.”  It’s about striking the balance.

I think the kind of way I’m coming to terms with it as far as these AudioBoos are concerned is: I write extensively on the blog; the podcast is transcribed; and nothing I’m saying in these AudioBoos is completely original — its either stuff I or other people have said elsewhere.  So, the content is available in accessible forms elsewhere, but not a transcript of exactly what I’m saying here.  Is that good enough?  I don’t know the answer.

Another thing that I think you need to take into account: different technologies are working in different ways; content is suitable in different forms.   When, for example, I transcribe the podcast: the interviews are transcribed word-for-word; but the rest of it isn’t — the rest of it is show-notes where I provide a written-version of the stuff that we cover, but it’s not a word-for-word transcript.  Does that mean that the podcast isn’t fully accessible? I’d argue not: I’m providing the same content, but I’m providing it in an alternative format.  And that’s quite an interesting conversation to have – as to whether or not that’s truly acceptable.  I think you have to take into account the format, and when you’re writing stuff that it’s okay if thats a bit different.

The original, audio version of this AudioBoo can be found through the widget below: