Webstandards, Accessibility and Usability at Penn State

One of the "hidden" audiences for video captions are non-native speakers of a particular language. For instance, a recent study from Language Learning and Technology (http://llt.msu.edu/) indicates that presenting captions on foreign language video increases comprehension.

Study
"The Effects of Captioning Videos Used for Foreign Language Listening Activities"
PDF File - http://llt.msu.edu/vol14num1/winkegasssydorenko.pdf

A page was just added to the site summarizing recommendations for designing accessible navigation.
http://webstandards.psu.edu/accessibility/tech/navigation

If you login, you can also post comments about this page or any page on the site.

The University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin and Syracuse University have announced positions squarely opposed to using eBook technology for course content, until the devices include accessibility features that meet legal standards and institutional expectations.

I recently sent out a survey to the PSUWeb community asking them a simple question - "Is accessibility hard?" I added a second question - "Why is it hard?". Find out what's on developer's minds (http://www.cjohansen.org/2009/11/is-accessibility-hard.html)

Google has added a tool to generate automatic captions on videos based on automatic speech recognition. As with Dragon Naturally Speaking, you have to check output captions for accuracy, but it's free (or at least cheap) and it's a start if you post content to YouTube. This would be especially helpful for student project videos.

See info and demo at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/automatic-captions-in-youtube.htm...

If you're on the Penn State Webstandards Listserv, you may have seen that WebAIM has published its results of a screen reader survey. You can see my summary at http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/blogs/tlt/2009/11/webaim-screen-reader... or go directly to http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey2/.

What happens if you have a series of images with no ALT tag...then the image fails to download?

You can see what happens on my blog post ALT Tags Benefit Everyone.

You can watch the Oct 12 presentation on accessibility live on Adobe Connect at
https://breeze.psu.edu/accessibility/

It will also be recorded.

From ITS Tech News
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