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Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

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Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#21

Post by crazygringo »

pdonis wrote: post #14
crazygringo wrote: post #4

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

> A national testing portal ought to support the default image format taken by the world's most popular phone, period. What if it can't because the format is proprietary and Apple wants to charge for its use? As I understand it, MS and Google have to pay licensing fees to enable support for it in Windows 10 and Android.

Support it by performing client-side conversion to JPEG. The device obviously already has the license.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#22

Post by sokoloff »

pdonis wrote: post #14
crazygringo wrote: post #4

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

> A national testing portal ought to support the default image format taken by the world's most popular phone, period. What if it can't because the format is proprietary and Apple wants to charge for its use? As I understand it, MS and Google have to pay licensing fees to enable support for it in Windows 10 and Android.

Have you seen what the College Board charges for AP testing? I think it's a cost of doing business and they can afford to pay a reasonable licensing fee to process the test results. If they can't, increase the test cost by another $5.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#23

Post by wmf »

_bxg1 wrote: post #3

This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…

18F released a pretty good guide about these topics but I can't shake the feeling that many organizations aren't willing to learn these lessons. https://github.com/18F/technology-budgeting/blob/master/hand...

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#24

Post by guptaneil »

pdonis wrote: post #14
crazygringo wrote: post #4

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

> A national testing portal ought to support the default image format taken by the world's most popular phone, period. What if it can't because the format is proprietary and Apple wants to charge for its use? As I understand it, MS and Google have to pay licensing fees to enable support for it in Windows 10 and Android.

You're thinking of HEVC (video encoding, like h.265): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P...

HEIC (image encoding) is available without royalties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_For...

Regardless, in this case, as others noted, iOS would have just converted to jpg if College Board was using a standard image upload form.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#25

Post by winter_blue »

Someone at the College Board just needs to write a few lines of code to convert HEIC images to JPEG, instead of forcing thousands (if not more) students to retake the test.

On Ubuntu, you can:

        sudo apt-get install libheif-examples
        heif-convert infile.heif outfile.jpg
Based on the article, it sounds like the College Board did actually receive the test files from these students. The students were emailed that the files were "corrupted". So in all honesty, this is just a matter of them actually just converting the files they've received then (or using an image viewer that can handled HEIC.)

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#27

Post by diebeforei485 »

oefrha wrote: post #11
crazygringo wrote: post #4

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

Tried a standard input tag with the proper accept attribute Selected a HEIC file from Photos in Safari, the selected image was automatically converted to JPEG. Ten bucks says College Board programmer(s) failed to do the most basic and standard filtering. Edit: Like a sibling comment said, the accept attribute actually isn't necessary; even PNG images (e.g. screenshots) from Photos are converted to JPEG automatically.…

Is this the case on both Desktop and Mobile Safari?

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#28

Post by danso »

crazygringo wrote: post #4

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

Would it be correct for iOS Safari to quietly reencode to jpeg when a HEIC file is uploaded via a webform? How would Safari know that the site's backend didn't want an HEIC file?

I agree the HEIC thing is very confusing (having set up my parents' phones recently), but I can't see how Apple is to blame. For starters, the College Board could've done a much better job emphasizing this step for iOS users in its instructions page. But for me, the overriding factor that places blame squarely on the College Board is this from the article:

> Senior Dave Spencer took a demo test before his Calculus AB exam to make sure he understood the process for uploading photos. He Airdropped an iPhone image of his responses to his Mac and tried to convert it by renaming the HEIC file to PNG. Changing a file’s extension does not guarantee that it will be converted, but Spencer was still able to submit the demo test with no problem.

> Spencer used the same process on the real exam and thought it went through, but he received an email the next day saying the files were corrupted and that he needed to retake the test.

So it seems that students had access to a demo before test day. If I'm reading the story right:

- During the demo, Dave's phone produced a HEIC file

- The demo upload initially failed. So Dave renamed the file extension to PNG.

- Dave uploaded the PNG (in name only), and the demo did not return an error.

- Dave assumed, quite understandably, that the renaming trick would work on test day too.

So the onus in the College Board here: they provided a demo in which the photo upload function appears to have been stubbed (e.g. "if 'PNG|JPG|JPEG' is filename, print "Success"), giving students and teachers false assurance that photo uploads would work on test day.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#29

Post by winter_blue »

oefrha wrote: post #11
crazygringo wrote: post #4

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

Tried a standard input tag with the proper accept attribute Selected a HEIC file from Photos in Safari, the selected image was automatically converted to JPEG. Ten bucks says College Board programmer(s) failed to do the most basic and standard filtering. Edit: Like a sibling comment said, the accept attribute actually isn't necessary; even PNG images (e.g. screenshots) from Photos are converted to JPEG automatically.…

Wow, I didn't know browsers even supported automatic image format conversion (this is pretty impressive IMO). Terrible that their programmers didn't specify that tag attribute.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#30

Post by zhengyi13 »

oefrha wrote: post #11
crazygringo wrote: post #4

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

Tried a standard input tag with the proper accept attribute Selected a HEIC file from Photos in Safari, the selected image was automatically converted to JPEG. Ten bucks says College Board programmer(s) failed to do the most basic and standard filtering. Edit: Like a sibling comment said, the accept attribute actually isn't necessary; even PNG images (e.g. screenshots) from Photos are converted to JPEG automatically.…

"Be strict in what you send; be liberal in what you accept" seems a relevant maxim here, but I wonder if it's reasonable to assume given the utter ubiquity of PNG and JPEG that of course that's what other people would be using?
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