The mods can change this link to https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24/882683463/the-computer-got-it...

The linked story is audio only and is associated with the Morning Edition broadcast, but the full story appears under our Special Series section.

(I work for NPR)

Ok, changed from https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24/882678392/man-says-he-was-fal.... Thanks!

As soon as I saw it was audio only, i left the site. Why do sites do this? How many people actually stick to the page and listen to that?

> How many people actually stick to the page and listen to that?

I just did. 3 minutes wasn't that bad and I wasn't somewhere where it would be a problem.

> Why do sites do this?

NPR is a radio network. I have seen that often they do transcribe their clips. I am not sure what the process they have for that looks like, but it seems this particular clip didn't get transcribed.

Edit: looks like they do have a transcription mentioned elsewhere in the thread. So seems like some kind of UI fail.

NPR does transcribe (many, most?) its audio stories, but usually there's a delay of a day or so – the published timestamp for this story is 5:06AM (ET) today.

edit: looks like there's a text version of the article. I'm assuming this is a CMS issue: there's an audio story and a "print story", but the former hadn't been linked to the latter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23628790

They transcribe all their stories. Back before the web was widespread, you could call or write NPR and have them mail a transcript to you.

Well, if anyone were going to do it, you'd think no one would be surprised about it being the "National Public Radio"

Accessibility still matters, or should still matter even if you’re a radio station, but probably especially if you’re a news radio station.

NPR is fantastic when it comes to accessibility by providing transcripts. I linked the page thinking the transcript will come later as they usually do. But turns out it was a wrong link. See elsewhere for the correct link.

How many TV shows have audio descriptions of non verbal parts of what you see on screen?

More than zero. It's called closed captioning, isn't it? I've quite often seen closed-captioning that put brief written descriptions of non-verbal depictions in bracket, and it's not entirely common either

https://www.automaticsync.com/captionsync/what-qualifies-as-... (see section: "High Quality Captioning")

Close captioning is for people who can’t hear.

I am not aware of many TV shows that offer audio commentary for the visually impaired.

Here is an example of one that does.

https://www.npr.org/2015/04/18/400590705/after-fan-pressure-...

Sorry, I thought that since we were originally talking about transcriptions of radio news broadcasts and accessibility for the hard of hearing that closed-captioning would be appropriate and relevant. But your point is well met.

Most people are going to hear the story on the radio or in a podcast app / RSS feed. It’s useful to have the story indexed on a shareable web link where it can be played on different platforms without any setup. If I wanted to share a podcast episode with friends in a group chat, a link like this would be a good way to do it. Since this is more of a long-form text discussion forum I’d probably look for a text format before posting here.

Why do radio sites post audio?

NPR's text-only article served to me:

https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=882683463