In December 2005, the word Podcast was awarded the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year. It beat off words like “Sudoku” and “Bird flu” to gain this title. How did something that was once the preserve of nerds and techie bloggers manage to become one of the web’s hottest trends and the defining phrase of the year? And, perhaps most significantly for accessible.ie, what can people do to help podcasting reach out to those with access issues?
What is a podcast?
A podcast generally refers to a digital recording of a radio or TV program that is made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player. They can also be played on a computer or burnt to a CD-ROM.
How do they work?
Wikipedia uses the analogy of push technology in describing how podcasts work. The content provider decides what files to make available to users in a feed and the subscriber chooses from a selection of feeds. The content provider, e.g. a blogger or radio station, uploads their music or video files (referred to as episodes) to a web server. They then reference these files in an XML file that contains their web addresses, titles and other optional fields like description and author.
A feed file (almost always RSS) then lists out the information from the xml file to the user. The RSS file can be picked up by any number of programs called podcatchers. Because the file is already archived and is a takeaway mp3 or mp4 file, the issue of sound quality does not come into the equation and the only variable faced by the user is the download time.
Podcatchers and the popularisation of the podcast
Initially any podcatcher available only allowed you to organise and download your files. With the release of Apple’s iTunes 4.9 in June 2005, all this changed. It allowed you to subscribe, download, play and sync files with your iPod. In simple terms, it brought podcasting to the masses. To put this growth into perspective, we can look at the work of web analyst Doc Searls. In September 2004 he began monitoring google searches for the term “podcasts”. His first search generated 24 results. 18 months later, as of March 1st 2006, it generates a staggering 210 million results.
In the latter quarter of 2005, video files began being tagged as podcasts alongside traditional audio episodes. Current models of the iPod and newcomers to the market like the Creative Zen Vision: M provide an affordable portable video player to the market. iTunes now supports free and fee-paying subscriptions to video podcasts. US residents are offered popular TV shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives the day after broadcast. More diverse topics like Photoshop tutorials and the video diaries of Superman director Bryan Singer are available internationally.
Are podcasts for everyone?
The growth in popularity of the podcast may have left many users with access issues feeling alienated. Most would imagine that this new trend is a completely inaccessible area, however there are possibilities for both manufacturers and broadcasters to help make them work for everyone. This issue will be explored in detail in part two of this article.
Tags: podcast