Finnberry does Ed-Tech

The guidance states:  Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text. What does that all mean? It basically means you need to stop and think about what information you get by seeing and consider how someone with a screen reader will get that same information. The structure of a document or web page is easy to get, if you can see. When we look at a page, headings are often on their own line, bold, bigger than the rest of the text. Lists are usually indented and have a number or a bullet point in front of each item. Paragraphs have a larger space between them than normal lines. Hyperlinks are usually underlined and/or in a different colour. These are all things that you see .  What about people who can't see? How would they know what is a heading, a list item, a paragraph, a hyperlink, etc? The only way is if your document or web page is structured correctly an...

When I posted my previous post, asking for a volunteer to do be my audio description voice, I wasn't sure whether anyone would even read it, never mind volunteer. I was so excited when a friend on Twitter contacted me and her daughter, Alice had offered to record the audio tracks.  I have to say, she has a really good voice for audio work and I think the finished product is really good! I was surprised at how easy it was to do. I just dragged Alice's audio files, which she had recorded from my last blog and named very logically, onto a new audio track in the time line. I had to increase the audio gain to make her clips a little louder but the quality was such that this was fine and didn't cause any problems with extra noise.  Anyway, enough of me. Here is the final version with audio description:

 This guideline is given at all three levels: 1.2.3 Level A - provide audio description or a text alternative 1.2.5 Level AA - provide audio description - this generally fits between existing audio/dialogue 1.2.7 Level AAA - provide extended audio description (this is where the video pauses to give more information to the user in a longer audio description that wouldn't fit neatly between existing audio Audio description (AA) Unlike captions, which YouTube helps you to do, audio description actually involves some planning and a fair bit of extra work. I confess, I have never attempted to do a video with audio description as it seems a daunting task. Maybe now is the time to have a go! Choosing a video This is where I realise why I haven't considered making an audio description yet. Most of my recent videos are instruction videos and I'm kind of giving the information as I go. With hindsight, I could have probably planned them with more thought for those that can't see t...

Firstly, you may have noticed that I've missed out 1.2.3. That is because some of the guidelines have several levels and are repeated later. 1.2.3 is about video content and audio description or alternative media. This meets the guidelines at the lowest level - level A. 1.2.5 deals with the same thing at AA level, where audio description should be built into the video. So we'll be looking at that. I'll be honest, I've never done it before but that's okay. We have to learn about these things, so let's learn together. Live audio Until Covid hit, I would have thought that this was mainly about live streaming videos, as some people do on YouTube. YouTube is slowly rolling out captions for live stream but you have to have loads of subscribers and I'm not sure how well it works. To be fair, I've watched live captions on the BBC and been baffled by some of the things that come up. This isn't something that is easy to do. Now, most of the situations where I ...

This is one that sounds quite scary but is actually quite easy to achieve. The guideline is:  Captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronised media, except when the media is a media alternative for text and is clearly labelled as such. What does it mean? If you produce a video that has audio in it... which is most videos, you need to make sure that captions are available for people who have a hearing impairment... or a sleeping baby... or a grumpy husband... or... This is where people often forget, it's not just disabled people who find these features useful. Captions or subtitles are useful for all kinds of reasons. I often put the TV on mute if my husband is on the phone. I turn on subtitles and I can still watch my programme and he can focus on his call. I think many adaptations are like that, which is where universal design becomes such a beautiful concept. How do I do it? Most people who create videos in a non-professional context, use YouTube. When y...

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Guideline 1.2 is that you must provide alternatives for time based media. This is then broken down into categories. The first category deals with pre-recorded audio only or video only. This post will look at video only. What is video-only media? This is most easily explained with an example but basically includes things like mime, animation and video that shows text without any audio support.  I found this lovely animation by South Eastern Guide Dogs: This is a lovely animated video that tells a story without words. It reminds me of the Pixar Short Films that I used to use with my year 3 and 4 classes to inspire creative writing. However, now imagine that you are blind. You would not be able to access this film at all. Audio description I once accidentally turned this on for a movie I was watching, and I couldn't work out how to turn it off. And that is often the downside of audio description... it isn't as easy to just toggle it on/off as it is with subtitles (which we will co...

Twitter I love Twitter but it does have some drawbacks. I think the biggest pain is that you can't edit your tweets after posting them. That means that if your phone randomly auto-corrects or you miss an apostrophe or whatever, you have to delete your tweet and start again. This extends to photos and alt text. If you forget to do it, you can't go back and add it later, like you can with Facebook. So you've got to remember at the point of tweeting. I usually add my photo before I write my tweet. When you add your photo, you get a nice clear Edit button. Click it. When you click on the Edit button, you get a window with two options: one allows you to crop your image and the other allows you to add alt text. Click on the Alt tab at the top of the window and type your description into the box at the bottom. Then click Save. When you have written your tweet and clicked Tweet, you will be able to see your post. You'll know that it has alt text because it will have an Alt sign...

Facebook When you create a post on Facebook and add one or more photos, you will get this pop up window and you can type your post at the top and your photo is underneath it. If you hover over the photo, the two buttons will appear: Edit and Add photos/video. Click on Edit. That brings up another window with a short menu on the left. The bottom option is Alternative Text. When you click on that, you get a box where you can type in your alt text. Make sure you've decided what to write first, as Facebook, rather unhelpfully, makes the picture all blurry. If you forget to add alt text on Facebook, it's not the end of the world because it lets you go back later to add it in.  Adding alt text later Let's assume you've added a photo or some other image and now you want to go back and add alt text. It's easy!  Go into your page and click on the photo. That usually brings the photo up bigger, in a pop up window. Look on the right, next to your name and there are three dots....