Sharing a Personal Experience
I'm mindful of the needs of my audience with whatever I'm creating. Sometimes, there are specific accessibility requirements that need deeper consideratin.
For example, I recently created training materials for a group session and one of the group was visually-impaired. Some of the materials were available in Braille, but most were created in an audio-format by myself, for all of the group, with printouts if needed. So, we had no PowerPoint slides at all and my comfort-zone was taking a hit! I worried about how this would impact upon the training and took extra care to ensure it worked, adding extra time into the timetable in case of the need for audio re-runs. Luckily, I'd created training stories, with different voices and sound effects and it worked out very well.
With that experience in mind, we do need to consider how we prepare materials and who may be missing out on our content.
Understanding Accessibility Issues
There are more than 250 million visually impaired people around the world; many other people have some sort of disability that make them hard to read. Production of materials in different formats is on the increase, and there is a resource that explains how to make internet media accessible. It helps you figure out which accessibility aspects your specific audio or video needs and includes requirements from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standard. Please click the link to visit the website here.
Demand for Audio is Increasing
Audio is on the increase. This is thanks in part to the rapid adoption of devices like Google Home, and Amazon Echo powered by the synthetic voice Alexa – as well as the growing success of podcasts and audiobooks. So, it makes sense to create audio versions of your work. Many AI apps can help with the conversion process.
Offering Captions and Video Transcripts
Do consider using captions or transcripts with video output. Firstly, you're helping to make your material available to people who are deaf or hard of hearing as well as in situations where sound is not available. Videos with captions are more discoverable through search and generally improve average watch time. They may help people who:
- can’t hear
- can’t hear well
- use English as a second language
- or, those who want to grasp the content more quickly and efficiently.
YouTube offers automatic captioning by using speech recognition technology. Bear in mind though, it's also often important to say what is going on in the video, not only what is said. Twitter allows you to enable alternate description for images, and Instagram allows unlimited captions for images too.
Use Built-in Accessibility Tools
If you use Word, then you can use the Accessibility function to assess your written work and receive improvements. Avoid writing posts that are more like literary essays. Keep sentences short and use simple words.
When seeking to improve search engine optimisation, we use page titles and headings, as well as meta descriptions and categories in our blogs. Search engine crawlers scroll through websites and provide information for assistive technologies that help people with physical or visual impairments access web content.
Finally, if you do write your blogs, do provide an audio version too. We post ours at the top of out blog post in bright, brand colours.
Do get in contact if you would like to discuss the content of this blog.