Making online content accessible

[mythbuster]

My Uni has just now gotten on the accessibility bandwagon. We use Canvas and the DIS office has found some program (Ally?) that is supposed to be able to close caption all your previously generated online content. A colleague is trying it out on her narrated Powerpoints and is finding that it's not even as good as Google translate. Add in that these are science classes with Latin terms and jargon, and you can imagine what gets spelled out.
   Any words of wisdom of the best programs for these functions? I'm all for the goal of accessibility, but my Uni's approach is always it should have been done last week, with no help.

[downer]

There was a thread on this in the old Forums.

My experience in support was similar to yours in terms of institutional support.

I was wondering how to make Venn Diagrams accessible online for the visually impaired. I never got a good answer from anyone.

I'm all for accessibility if it is carried out in a rational manner. But I've not had any students who actually declared visual or auditory disabilities in these classes, and it would be a massive time suck to make a lot of stuff accessible. Since my time is strictly limited, any such time spent on that means I don't so other stuff, like grade work or respond to student posts.

I found that while the administration made a lot of noise about it, they didn't actually check on what had been implemented, so I've been flying under the radar for the last year.

[kiana]

I took an online training class, and the instructor kept insisting that every picture (including graphs) had to have a narrative description sufficient for a completely blind student to complete the task unaided. This really irked me as it just did not make sense.

I went and talked to someone who actually was at disability services to make sure that I was not off my rocker, and after showing them the specific picture and the questions, they said "Well no, something like this we would need to accommodate the student with a tactile graph."

That was enough for me. I replaced all pictures that, in my professional opinion, could not be narrated with "This is a graph for topic x. Purpose: y. If unable to access, please contact instructor" or something like that, and took the dings from the instructor.

[Hegemony]

My sources tell me that YouTube will automatically caption your videos, although then you have to go over them "by hand" to make sure they're comprehensible afterwards.

I think closed-captioning for the hearing impaired is particularly important, as that is a population that will hope to make good use of online classes, where components such as the "discussion" are so much more accessible to the hearing impaired than in an in-person class.

[Antiphon1]

My sources tell me that YouTube will automatically caption your videos, although then you have to go over them "by hand" to make sure they're comprehensible afterwards.

Check with your institution before you choose YouTube as your delivery mode.  Since YouTube owns more or less all content on it's platform, your school may not want to relinquish control of the material to a third party.  Further, you may need to address the advertisement aspect which drives the royalties YouTube pays to it's posters.  These items may or may not be a sticking point with your school depending on campus policies, but a few discrete questions might be a prudent course of action. 

[polly_mer]

The discussion at https://www.chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,259329.0.html might be relevant.  I'll repost my first post there because of the links to the recent lawsuits in the area of online accessibility.

[...] it is indeed the law and enforcement of the law has led to some recent high-profile lawsuits (e.g., http://www.centerdigitaled.com/higher-ed/Web-Accessibility-Investigation-Higher-Ed.html).

You likely never will have these students, but the accessibility officer cannot tell you to break the law, especially as that officer tries to create a shift in culture so that people think of descriptive video for the blind as well as closed-captioning.

[Antiphon1]

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/5-speech-recognition-apps-that-auto-caption-videos/

This article compares a few closed captioning applications.  The author discusses various means to capture and add captions videos.  Most interesting are the existing apps used for mobile platforms.  And apparently, the software is cost effective. 

[Hegemony]

Presumably you could also just post a transcript, instead of having to caption the video on the video.

[mamselle]

WordThread lets you combine text, voiceover, and visuals, if that's useful.

It takes a bit of work to learn, but I did a French conversation piece on it with pictures and the written text as well as the pronunciation of the words--once at a more-or-less regular speed, still slow enough for learners to understand, and once at the 1-2-word-at-a-time, very slow speed, to clarify articulation and vowel use for beginning practice.

Two of those three would be useful for hearing-impaired learners, the slowed-down part was useful for all learners (visually-impaired included).

Had I worked at it, there might have been a way to add a fourth track for description of the visuals and maybe a spelled-out version of the text for the visually impaired as well.

M.

[cc_alan]

My sources tell me that YouTube will automatically caption your videos, although then you have to go over them "by hand" to make sure they're comprehensible afterwards.

Check with your institution before you choose YouTube as your delivery mode.  Since YouTube owns more or less all content on it's platform, your school may not want to relinquish control of the material to a third party.  Further, you may need to address the advertisement aspect which drives the royalties YouTube pays to it's posters.  These items may or may not be a sticking point with your school depending on campus policies, but a few discrete questions might be a prudent course of action.

I have YouTube caption them and it seems to do a decent job.

I put the videos up on YouTube and then my own site. You can download the caption file from YouTube which I then have loaded when the video is loaded on my site. Since these are my own personal videos, I don't enable the advertising on YouTube. Some students prefer to watch them via YouTube plus it also allows me to reach a larger audience (I let anyone watch them). But I think they are organized better on my website for my students from a what-do-we-need-to-study-in-this-section pov.

Oh, and YouTube doesn't own your content. Here's a copy-paste from the appropriate section of their license agreement (link below, also)-

"For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the Service. You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of your videos that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you submit are perpetual and irrevocable."

YouTube License Link

Thank you for the software link, Antiphon1! Cool!

[ciao_yall]

Y'all have heard about the time I had to make an online activity accessible for the visually impaired in a Visual Merchandising class?

[cc_alan]

Y'all have heard about the time I had to make an online activity accessible for the visually impaired in a Visual Merchandising class?

Please share it again for people who didn't see it!

[ciao_yall]

Y'all have heard about the time I had to make an online activity accessible for the visually impaired in a Visual Merchandising class?

Please share it again for people who didn't see it!

Not much more to it than that. I was creating an online class for Visual Merchandising. I created an activity in which students looked up the winners for a a particular industry award and asked them to choose their favorite, assessing how the example used (or didn't use) the rules they had learned.

The website wasn't accessible to the visually impaired (obvi) so the Online Instructional Design Expert (tm) rejected the assignment.

IIRC the resolution, after going around in circles was to "contact the instructor if you have difficulty with this website for an alternative assignment."

[Antiphon1]

My sources tell me that YouTube will automatically caption your videos, although then you have to go over them "by hand" to make sure they're comprehensible afterwards.

Check with your institution before you choose YouTube as your delivery mode.  Since YouTube owns more or less all content on it's platform, your school may not want to relinquish control of the material to a third party.  Further, you may need to address the advertisement aspect which drives the royalties YouTube pays to it's posters.  These items may or may not be a sticking point with your school depending on campus policies, but a few discrete questions might be a prudent course of action.

I have YouTube caption them and it seems to do a decent job.

I put the videos up on YouTube and then my own site. You can download the caption file from YouTube which I then have loaded when the video is loaded on my site. Since these are my own personal videos, I don't enable the advertising on YouTube. Some students prefer to watch them via YouTube plus it also allows me to reach a larger audience (I let anyone watch them). But I think they are organized better on my website for my students from a what-do-we-need-to-study-in-this-section pov.

Oh, and YouTube doesn't own your content. Here's a copy-paste from the appropriate section of their license agreement (link below, also)-

"For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the Service. You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of your videos that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you submit are perpetual and irrevocable."

YouTube License Link

Thank you for the software link, Antiphon1! Cool!

My pleasure! 

If my sometimes faulty memory serves, it was the part about retaining the videos on the server that sent our IT guru into a small but significant snit.  I had a YouTube channel back in the day. The school wrote a policy about only having our content on the CMS.  I suppose it kind of make sense if you are serving some high school students.  High schools wifi frequently blocks social media including YouTube.