The FeedRoom Makes Obama '508 Compliant'

Written by Ryan Lawler

Friday, April 10. 2009 at 11:59 AM EDT 1 comment

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Online video management firm The FeedRoom says it is helping President Obama to reach more Americans with his plan for U.S. health care reform, providing a video player that makes his message accessible to viewers with disabilities and special needs.

The President's video, which is being hosted and managed by the Department of Health and Human Services at HealthReform.gov, is using a video player designed by The FeedRoom made to be compliant with Section 508 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.

While not the most aesthetically pleasing video player on the market, The FeedRoom's 508-compliant player was created to include closed captioning and a high-contrast color scheme, thereby allowing video to be accessed by people with disabilities such as partial vision, color blindness, and deafness.

"When you look at the player, what pops out at you is the color and the closed captioning. Closed captioning is the most visible aspect of it, but that's just the beginning," says FeedRoom CEO Mark Portu.

The player also includes support for a number of assisted devices, such as screen readers, alternative input devices, and speech-recognition technology.

The FeedRoom developed the 508-compliant player about a year ago, in response to a request from a federal agency to enable the technology for its videos. Since being launched, the company has been contacted by a number of government agencies for the technology.

In addition to the Department of Health and Human Service, The FeedRoom is supplying the player to the General Services Administration and has also been contacted by some military agencies about using it. And the calls keep coming in -- Portu says that the company has been contacted by two federal agencies in just the last few days.

The creation of a 508-compliant video player makes sense for The FeedRoom, which serves more government agencies and enterprise customers than media and entertainment firms, Portu says.

"Our business was starting to be more enterprise and corporate in nature, and less about media and entertainment," he says. "When the video itself is informational, and when it is less about entertainment than about spreading information, we decided that for us to succeed, that video had to be ubiquitous and accessible."