Workshop 3 Accessible Multimedia

1
Workshop 3Accessible Multimedia

• Web Content Accessibility Project
• Funded by BCcampus
• Natasha Boskic, Kirsten Bole, Nathan Hapke
• University of British Columbia

2
Workshop schedule

• Monday August 21Basics of Web Accessibility
• Tuesday August 22Coding an Accessible Website
• Wednesday August 23Accessible Multimedia
• Thursday August 24Creating Usable Content
• Friday August 25Disabilities Assistive
  Technology

3
The Plan

• Discuss accessibility issues of the following
  types of media
• Audio
• Video
• JavaScript
• Flash
• Java Applets
• Online conferencing
• PDF

4
The Golden Rule

• Make all the information available to all users
• The media itself cant always be made accessible
• Adding different presentation of content
  increases accessibility!

5
Audio

• Alternative for spoken word can be as simple as a
  transcript
• For music, lyrics
• If more complex, consider providing a description
  of why the audio is significant and/or important

6
Video

• Good news
• Great for those with cognitive disabilities
• Problem areas
• Visual impairment
• Audio Description
• Aural impairment
• Transcripts/Subtitles/Captions

7
Audio Description

• Narrated information about the visuals
• Tell non-sighted users what the audio soundtrack
  does not
• Example
• Family walking in the
• Rose Garden
• aka Described Video

8
Captioning Subtitling

• Subtitles What was said
• Captions What was heard
• Subtitles, plus other aural cues
• E.g. Knock on Door, Phone Ringing
• Open Captions
• Captions directly ingrained into video
• Closed Captions

9
Closed Captioning

• Captions provided separate from video
• User must have capable player
• For online video W3Cs SMIL technology
• RealPlayer
• Ambulant
• Since July 1993, 13 Televisions have built in
  CC Decoder by law

10
Video The Hard Part

• Provide enough information so your audience knows
  what is happening
• but dont overwhelm them!
• Tell the viewer that the people are in the Rose
  Garden if it affects the meaning of the video
• Dont tell the viewer if a plane happens to fly
  by (unrelated to the scene)
• Same for captioning

11
JavaScript

• WCAG requires that web applications be usable
  without JavaScript
• Some screen readers completely ignore
• Some users disable JavaScript
• JAWS relies on Internet Explorer to render
  JavaScript actions
• But JAWS isnt able to tell the user about
  changes to the page made by JavaScript

12
Flash

• Great for those with cognitive disabilities
• Interactive demos can often explain better than
  text
• Screen readers can interpret if the flash video
  is made correctly
• alternative text on buttons etc.
• Ensure reading order makes sense
• Ensure user can navigate with keyboard
• Use flash for interactive content, not your whole
  site!

13
Java Applets

• Same issues as Flash
• Reading order
• Keyboard navigation
• Plain text (not graphical)
• Java works (slightly) differently on PC/Mac, test
  both

14
Conferencing

• (Horizon Wimba Live Classroom, Elluminate Live)
• Slides get converted to graphical format
• Can provide slide descriptions
• Can also provide closed captioning

15
PDF Portable Document Format

• Good Text is correctly handled by screen readers
• Bad Users must launch external viewer
• Use tags to specify
• Alternative text on images
• Headings
• etc.

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PDF Tricks of the Trade

• Make sure text is textual (not graphical)
• Use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) if
  scanning a document
• Ensure search tool works
• Google the URL
• Output is similar to what A.T. can interpret
• Acrobat has a built in screen reader!

17
PDF Correct Usage

• Use PDF only when you need functionality you
  cant get from HTML
• Enhanced Forms
• Documents for print
• E.g. Order forms
• Strict multi-columnar
• E.g. Academic Articles
• Special notation

18
Resources

• http//www.adobe.com/accessibility/
• http//www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/pdfs
  /acro7_pg_ue.pdf
• http//www.alistapart.com/articles/
  pdf_accessibility/
• http//www.w3.org/AudioVideo/

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Thank you for coming!

• Join us tomorrow for Creating Usable Content- 12
  pm PST
• Natasha Boskic (natasha.boskic_at_ubc.ca)
• Kirsten Bole (kirsten.bole_at_ubc.ca)
• Nathan Hapke (nhapke_at_interchange.ubc.ca)