Voice of the Year: NK State Television

RantWoman is sending out 2011 with some reflections and reviews of various voices, natural and computer-generated, and other information age audio experiences. This item is devoted to the passing of North korea's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il.

"Dear Leader" (Odious Dictator), RantWoman supposes is not necessarily a sobriquet up and coming young movers and shakers necessarily aspire to. RantWoman also finds the position of geopolitical football in a geostrategic hotspot unenviable. No matter how odd the North Korean personality cult looks to outsiders, RantWoman wishes to extend deep compassion to the people of North Korea and to wish them a path to recovery and renewal. RantWoman is not particularly in a position to comment on what that should look like.

RantWoman IS in a position to comment on the voice of commentator from North Korean state television. This woman's lugubrious and stentorian rendition of the death notice has doubtless been replayed around the world billions of times by now. RantWoman has been claiming, falsely she realized but that's another story, that she does not know a word of Korean. Still, every time that notice has replayed, RantWoman has been transfixed. RantWoman is coming to think that sort of death notice has got to be one of the more striking perks of the title "Dear Leader."

The link provides part of the text in English; the video has English subtitles with more text. Even the title "Dear Leader" does nto relieve the subject of RantWoman rants of RantWoman wailing about accessibility issues.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/8964998/North-Korean-state-TV-announces-death-of-leader-Kim-Jong-il.html



Accessibility notes:

--BBC sites do a much better job of accessible presentation than this Daily Telegraph site does. RantWoman recommends that the Daily Telegraph consult with and take seriously advice from an accessible interface specialist.

--RantWoman is not able to test the script that plays the video but RantWoman is commenting because she only managed to interact with the controls for the video and generating the imbed script relying on her screen enlarger. RantWoman cannot rule out the possibility that she is just an unsophisticated user of her screen reader, but RantWoman is able to interact with enough other media controls to think the problem is not just lack of screen reader sophistication on RantWoman's part. If any blind readers have suggestions about interacting with this page, RantWoman would be most grateful fo tips in the Comments.