Accessibility

General Accessibility Considerations

See the Access to Open Educational Resources wiki on the UNESCO website, reflecting an ongoing discussion about access issues relating to OER.

Captioning

Captioning in the context of coursecasting refers to the display of text along with a video to provide additional or interpretive information to viewers. Typically, captioning (also referred to as subtitles) is a transcription of the audio portion of the video, synched so that the text displays as the words are spoken or sounds occur. Most commonly, captioning is thought of as an accommodation for viewers who are hearing impaired. However, there are several other benefits of captioning (taken from http://www.capscribe.com/):

1. Captions compensate for noisy backgrounds or where sound isn't allowed.
2. They provide an solution for poor audio quality
3. Quickly browse the video by reading the associated text as you drag the controller as the captions are always visible
4. Everyone can see the correct spellings of people, places, and things.
5. Catch details that normally slide by unnoticed.
6. Meet the Web Accessibility guidelines, along with any state, provincial and federal requirements.
7. Use captioning to provide alternate language tracks
8. Provide additional support for people who are learning English as a second language.
9. Make your content fully accessible to people who have hearing loss.
10. Video on the web can even look better when the captioning is on.

In the context of course capture, generating transcription of a lecture is most often done manually. Some advancements are being made in automated text-to-speech processing (see MIT's showcase article on the " Spoken Language Browser"). However, the accuracy level still necessitates manual review and corrections.

Examples

For synching transcriptions to video, several options exist and are in development.

• CapScribe is a University of Toronto project developing a free web-based captioning software tool.
• World Caption is a tool for creating QuickTime text tracks.
• UC Berkeley uses Automatic Sync for caption synchronization

Accessibility for Low Bandwidth

Here are two documents to do with accessibility in the context of low bandwidth:

• The first one (http://www.aptivate.org/webguidelines/Home.html) is to do with web access in general, it contains a multi-media section (http://www.aptivate.org/webguidelines/Multimedia.html).
• Here's a second document, that unpacks the multi-media section, and gives some further pointers as to how the advice was arrived at: http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org/Web_Design_4_Low_Bandwidth

iTunes U Accessibility

• FindArticles - National Federation of the Blind and Commonwealth of Massachusetts Announce Agreement with Apple to Make iTunes Fully Accessible Business Wire, Sept 26, 2008
  Here's an excerpt:

  On September 9, Apple released iTunes 8, which contains significant accessibility improvements. Under today's agreement, Apple will make iTunes U (a dedicated area of the iTunes Store for content provided by colleges and universities) fully accessible by December 31, 2008, and will ensure the full accessibility of the iTunes software and the rest of the iTunes Store to blind people using both Mac and Windows operating systems by June 30, 2009. Over the next three years, Apple will continue to work with officials in the office of the Massachusetts Attorney General and the National Federation of the Blind to ensure that the iTunes services remain accessible to the blind and that accessibility issues are resolved. Apple has also agreed to contribute $250,000 to the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind to assist the agency in providing adaptive technology to blind residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

• An interesting discussion about iTunes-U accessibility summarized here (NOTE: the notes below predate the announcement above, so may no longer be accurate of the most recent version of iTunes):
  • latest improvements for iTunes U client:
    • Mac version
      • uses VoiceOver screen reader available in the Leopard Environment.
      • inherits OS display themes (including high-contrast themes)
      • most program functions work correctly via the keyboard
      • most form elements and controls are correctly labeled and read in the correct order.
    • Windows version of iTunes
      • minimal support for accessibility.
      • does not correctly inherit OS display themes
      • many program functions don't work correctly via the keyboard, and many form elements and controls lack labels and/or read incorrectly.
  • Quicktime (and therefore iTunes)
    • Quicktime supports Line-21 captions for videos and transcript can be embedded in audio files.
  • Issues with iTunes U sites
    • most iTunes U content not perceivable by screen readers or reachable via the keyboard.
  • latest improvements for iTunes U sites
    • iTunes (and the most recently builds of iPods) now support Line-21 captions for videos and transcripts can be embedded in audio files (with some minor limitations).
  • Issues with Apple Products in general
    • non-compliant documentation