We present to you a menu of tidbits collected in recent days that are too short for blog posts and sometimes too long for a tweet (when we want to add clarifying comments). Headings provide a light grouping to help you skim the offerings. Bon appétit!
The Old Folks
Aging is a suitable topic in technical communications because it involves all of us at some point. Don’t expect aging to go away! There are always articles about helping today’s older generation with technology or preparing for a future with an older generation who grew up with technology. Whether you call them senior citizens, the elderly, the old folks, or gray panthers, they are your audience at some level and at some point. Don’t ignore them. Grandma might get nasty!
- With our rush to go online, are we alienating older people who are not so comfortable online? This article argues that offline accessibility is essential for older people.
- Helping Elders Along the Digital Path
- How do you design for senior citizens
- SUS-IT Project Page – Helping older people to use information technologies for a better and more independent future
- Greying Gamers Will Require More Accessibility Options
- Can we be too healthy and live too long? This opinion piece in the LA Times ponders the meaning and implications of aging. Perhaps a bit too pessimistically?
Academia, Education, and Online Learning
The IMS Global Learning Consortium is an excellent resource for those of you somewhere in academia. IMS GLC aims for “standards that enable the development and adoption of innovative technologies to improve and transform education worldwide.” They held the Learning Impact 2010 conference in May, but I cannot find public slides or material from the conference. Go explore if it has aroused your curiosity.
What are the issues with online learning and accessibility? This article examines a recent report from the U.S. Department of Education and poses questions about “universal design of online learning environments and materials”. You can download the report in the article.
Tools That Change Lives
@ezufelt once wrote, “I don’t like the analogy of web accessibility being like a ramp. Web accessibility is a well built building from the foundation up.” I agree with this and want to include those technical communicators who are not in software – accessibility is part of the foundation whether you are working with software or hardware. Some people seem to find this concept hard to digest. Stories that tell how accessible products have a positive effect in someone’s life could be the tipping point. I’ve collected some links that tell stories – life-changing stories, in fact.
- The story of Proloquo2Go: a graduate student’s iPhone application gives voice to people with communication disabilities. Another article tells how Proloquo2Go influenced a little boy’s life.
- The iPad grabbed everyone’s attention when it came out. Most reviews discussed the fancy bells and whistles. Far more interesting were the articles that demonstrated its value as a kind of off-the-shelf assistive technology: a new world for a young boy with cerebral palsy, an affordable communicator for a busy entrepreneur, or iMean, an app to help an autistic teen communicate.
- Assistive technology called COGKNOW is helping dementia sufferers get through the day.
- (I was uncomfortable about recommending the following article. Why? There was an auto-play ad on the page that drove me crazy as I searched for the source of the sound! You are warned.) The article discusses how the web is improving the lives of disabled computer users
- iComm is an iPhone app created by a father to give a voice to his severely disabled daughter.
- A nurse with dyslexia studied for her nursing degree thanks to the help of mobile dyslexia tools.
- Scientists in Peru are using virtual environmental as support for treatment and rehabilitation of persons with physical disabilities.
- What assistive technology helps Juergen Manthey, a man with Locked-In Syndrome?
Use these stories as inspiration for involving people with disabilities in any kind of usability testing you are doing – or should be doing. No matter how clever you are, you will not be able to think up all possible scenarios on your own. Remember, users can always provide a new and surprising angle. If people with disabilities are involved as developers or designers of products, wow! Think of the potential for inclusion in that scenario!
The Last Word
I have a dream that one day we will not be judged by our abilities/bodies but by the content of our character. – @wendyabc
Link Contributors
This post was glued together with links or inspiration from many people. They are listed with their Twitter names.
@anikto
@atmacjournal
@DaveBanesAccess
@dboudreau
@IBMAccess
@jebswebs
@Jennison
@joemsie
@kellylford
@maccymacx
@mpaciello
I made my first transcription today! Tom Johnson posted his videocast interview with Brenda Huettner from the STC Summit in Dallas last week. I was provoked. I’ve argued for ages that technical communicators can lead the way in promoting transcriptions and captions (and audio descriptions, too). Here was a technical communication video on the topic of (website) accessibility, and it excluded my hard-of-hearing technical communicator friends and colleagues. It also excluded any hard-of-hearing or deaf passer-by.
Update: A close-captioned version of the video is now available on YouTube.
Why Did I Make a Transcription
Tom is well-known in the technical communication community, and I’ve nudged him about transcribing his many videocasts on his blog. (I’m referred to in the interview, but not by name!) With that visibility, he could be a great ambassador for accessibility practices. He responded by saying I could offer to transcribe his videos. My thought was that all his followers could offer to do just one transcription each. That would spread the load and get the job done. I am too involved in too many projects already, so I honestly couldn’t manage a lot of transcriptions. Catch-22. However, Brenda is a friend, another advocate of accessibility practices soon to give birth to a book on the topic, and a perfect subject for a transcription. I transcribed the video!
How Did I Make the Transcription?
It took me 35 minutes to just transcribe the 6 minutes and 51 seconds, and I don’t think I am a super (fast) typist. I had two windows open. One was the browser with the video and the other was TextEdit (simple text editor on Mac). My procedure was to play a snippet of the video, press the spacebar on my keyboard to stop it, toggle to TextEdit and type the text I had heard, toggle back to the browser with the video, and press spacebar to start it again. Repeat until finished!
I only fixed major fumble-finger typos as I transcribed. I left simple typos for the review pass-through. When i finished the transcription process, I still had the text and video windows side by side. I played the entire video and read my transcript while listening, making edits as I went along (and stopping the video while I did that). I didn’t time my editing phase very well – both the re-listen/review and general editing – but it was definitely under 15 minutes. Perhaps I could complete this step more quickly if I used a fancier authoring tool. I was also a bit conscious of the time because I was doing this as a demo of the entire process. I also debated (with myself) how much fixing to do. I wanted to capture the informal tone of the interview, so I left grammar oddities as they were. That threw me with regard to punctuation. I added where a long stream of words might just be a bit much to understand. In other words, I spent some extra time on thinking about a strategy. Another time, I could speed things up, having thought this through.
Summary: 50 minutes for almost 7 minutes. 7 minutes typing for 1 minute talking? I know an experienced or a speedy typist could do better. I also know I could take this script and upload it to the YouTube system for captioning. That can be another lesson for another day.
The Transcript of the Brenda Huettner Interview at STC10
In the transcript, TJ stands for Tom Johnson and BH stands for Brenda Huettner.
TJ: Hi, this is Tom Johnson at idratherbewriting.com. We are at the STC Summit in Dallas, Texas, and I’m talking with Brenda Huettner. She’s working on a book if you listened to the other podcast with Dick Hamilton, she’s working on a book called “Communicating with Everyone”. So she’s really an accessibility guru and I am hoping that Brenda can give me some real practical advice for how I can make my website more accessible. I have written text in the form of posts, I have audio podcasts, I have videocasts, I have images. So Brenda let’s start with the videocasts. What can I do to make them more accessible to people?
BH: I would suggest the first thing to look at is providing a written transcript for people who can’t hear. It’s a little bit easier than doing captions on the video, but as long as there’s a text version then deaf people can still get your content.
TJ: So now actually somebody from the AccessAbility SIG recommended that I do this as well and YouTube has come out with captioning which might work but in my attempts to use it, it was kind of a little off. Actually a lot off. Ha ha. How do… how do… I imagine a common objection is that people just don’t have time to create these transcripts. What’s your response to that?
BH: Essentially I would say that if you’re taking the time to create the content, the video, or whatever you’re creating, you are limiting your audience by not providing access to everyone. And if you are happy with half the audience you might otherwise have, that’s certainly up to you if it’s not a, if it’s a site that doesn’t come under Federal regulation, but why would you want to limit your output? You’re putting it out there to share with all of us. Let’s share fully.
TJ: OK. So usually when people think oh making your site accessible, when they think about accessibility, they often think oh, there’s not that many deaf readers or not that many blind readers, but I was sitting at the table with the other people from Google today, a whole string of them, and they told me that once you do machine transcription of YouTube videos you can then translate them ’cause they have auto-translation as well. So there I can begin to see where yeah that’s a lot of people, everybody who doesn’t speak English basically who I’m excluding, but the transcription I’m guessing is gonna be kind of poor. Do you think a poor transcription is better than no transcription?
BH: I suspect that you’re gonna get a different answer to that one from everyone you ask but I would rather see a poor transcription than none. It’s sort of like if I’m working and I suddenly get a piece of text I need in a language I’m not that familiar with but I really want to know what it is, I can go to one of the inexpensive online free translations and I get close enough so that I can determine if I need to pursue it further. A transcription of any kind will at least give people the idea of what your content is if they want to then pursue other mechanisms. There are automated uh screen reader or what have you that might give them more options.
TJ: So talking about transcription let’s move into the written text part.
BH: OK.
TJ: So my text on my site isn’t that large. I think it’s 12 pixels or something. What’s a good size font for improving readability?
BH: I would say that you don’t want to set a head font. You want to allow the viewer your audience to make the font whatever is comfortable for them. So you use relative sizes and you allow the people to use their own software to make it as big as they need to make it. Different people will have different needs.
TJ: So when you say use relative sizes are you saying rather than using font size equals 12 px you use like 1.1 dot em. Is it em versus the px?
BH: It’s typically if you say it’s plus one which means one bigger than default or plus three if it’s a heading.
TJ: So is it better to just put, I’ve seen the font plus and minus buttons on sites but it seems like that requires more work from the reader. Why not just put it in 14pt font. That’s a little bigger. 14. Anyway, a little bigger or do you think it’s just better to add the control or do both?
BH: I would say allow your users to change it to however is going to work for them. Different people will have different needs and someone who can read a 14 would be happy with that, but somebody else might need an 18 and you’re not going to be able to set one number that works for everybody. So let them choose.
TJ: So let’s talk about one last thing. Images.
BH: OK.
TJ: People who don’t read images or don’t see images well would probably need alt text but uh are there any other advantages to doing alt text besides improving readability? I’ve heard that it increases your SEO your search engine optimization as well?
BH: That’s true. The alt tag becomes part of what your search engines can find. The problem is that if you’re just using alt tags for SEO, you’re not describing the photo enough for the people for whom it ought to be why you’re giving the alt tag. You want your graphics to be very descriptive. The other thing I’d like to add about graphics is to be really careful of colorblind, red and green and there are several others, ’cause that does throw people off who might not otherwise even complain about it. They just look and see a grey square.
TJ: Alright Brenda. Thanks. If people want to know more about you, do you have a website you want to point them to?
BH: Actually I would love it if people looked at my Twitter page. I’m at Twitter.com/bphuettner and that’s my primary output at this time.
TJ: Alright Brenda. Thanks for talking with me.
BH: Thanks, Tom.
End of transcript.
This blog post is written for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010 celebrated on May 1.
Our community’s name – AccessAbility – is a play on the word accessibility. The first “i” in the correct word is replaced by an “a” to emphasize ability. Our name puts focus on the ability to access… whatever. Our community focuses on accessibility as it applies to technical communicators and the field of technical communication; how to prepare material that is accessible by everyone or how can we make the preparation of material accessible by any technical communicator. An example of the last point could be a blind person being able to prepare documentation without the authoring tool creating a barrier. In the year 2010, a focus like this ought to be a given.
Is it?
One person recently asked whether we need a new game plan to make the Web accessible. Last year, the term “Web adaptability” was coined in the paper “From Web Accessibility to Web Adaptability“.
You see, there is a core of people who work on the topic of accessibility on a daily basis in their professional lives. There are also those who need “things” to be accessible on a daily basis in their lives. Aside from these two cases, is anyone even aware of accessibility issues? A blank stare seems to be the standard reaction when you ask “what about accessibility”? Are those of us who think about accessibility all the time a minority? How do we spread an awareness of inclusion and equality in a way that sticks?
To me, this is a matter of a mindset. Personally, I have to go outside the contraints of the technical communication category. I look at everything in life, but I can always bring the lesson learned back to technical communication.
- When I take the Metro and see a sign declaring the elevator out of order, I immediately think of people in wheelchairs or with canes or babystrollers who cannot take the stairs like I can. I don’t ignore the sign because it really doesn’t apply to me. I think, “how could this be fixed so no one has a problem?”
- When I listen to the bus driver make an unclear announcement about the next busstop, I think about the blind person who is dependent on a clear and ungarbled message to get off at the right stop. I think that the bus companies should do an overhaul of their loudspeaker system and train their drivers in the importance of clear speech. (This is actually happening in my corner of the world as GPS systems are being put in place and professionally made taped announcements are being used, which let the driver focus on driving.)
(I think my interest in technical communication and accessibility is what now makes me aware of accessibility issues all the time. In fact, now I can’t stop noticing accessibility issues everywhere!)
The eamples I list here are outside an office workplace, but a technical communicator can use her skills to evaluate the situation and communicate the issue and possible solutions in writing to the authorities. I like to think that we can do a better job than many people simply because of the skills we have from our work. One of those skills is responsibility. If we discover a bug in the product while preparing documentation, we report it to the developers. I call my examples bugs, so I’d treat them the same way.
Let’s go back to the workplace.
- How do you deal with a colleague with a broken leg? Do you have to make a lot of adjustments for that person and how do you feel about it?
- What if a job candidate came in – in a wheelchair? Would you focus on their skills with FrameMaker or their wheelchair? (And could the person even get into the building in a wheelchair?
- What if you had a colleague or employee with stress, bipolar disorder, or some other “invisible” disability? How would you deal with that? Would you care about them or the “bottom line”?
Could you think beyond the label of “disability”?
Ableism (or disablism as it is known in some countries) is sneaky, and invades even those with the best intentions. Pity is probably a typical reaction. “Poor thing.” “I’d hate to be born like that.” “How can they cope?” Those pity remarks are not well received! How do I know? Because I have read blog posts by people on the receiving end of those remarks. I’ve seen advertisements in old magazines soliciting support for a childrens’ home – general children in poor health and with one or no parents. A photo of a child with a leg brace and crutches would be sure to bring in some money. Did anyone look at that child and think “that is a young person who can become a neuroscientist or an inventor”? Generally, the reaction is “poor thing”. This is not a constructive attitude for anyone ever.
Making products that pose barriers to some users is also a form of this slap-in-the-face pity. “Sorry you can’t use the mouse to access our wonderful offerings.” “Oh, you can’t hear the audio in this instructional video? Can’t you find a friend to explain it to you?” “What do you mean by assistive technology?” “We don’t have blind customers.”
I have posed a lot of questions in this post. Sorry, but you have to do some work. We all do. We all have to look inside ourselves and think about our mindset when it comes to matters of inclusion and accessibility. I talked a lot about accessibility here and not directly about disablism. Accessibility is an area where technical communicators (of all abilities) can shine. There are subtopics of accessibility in so many other areas, too, such as management, so it should be easy to find an area where we can all take action right away. Taking action and looking forward is what I want to do.
PS Next time you hear someone say “we don’t have blind customers” or basically write off the need to consider people with disabilities, tell them there are 650 million people with disabilities in the world and in the US alone, people with disabilties are the third largest market segment.
For more articles written for “BADD2010″, visit the home of Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010.
It’s that time of year again. The 2010 STC Summit begins early Saturday morning in Dallas, Texas, with the pre-conference courses, followed by more courses on Sunday along with Leadership Day. Before it closes on Wednesday at lunch-time, attendees will have chalked up many hours exchanging ideas, questions, solutions, and business cards.
Our SIG networking breakfast is scheduled for Monday morning, as is the Usability and User Experience SIG. Our two SIGs have been kissing cousins, if you like, so sharing tables at breakfast is a great networking idea! We always encourage mingling with STC UUX! We hope you’ll have quality conversations to kick off your Monday.
Conference Program and Highlights
There is an online version of the conference program; don’t forget to check the topics with a usability and accessibility focus. A printed version will be available at the conference for attendees.
Let me highlight three sessions:
- Using Stories for More Effective Usability, May 03, 3:15 PM to 4:30 PM in Reunion B with Whitney Quesenbery, Whitney Interactive Design
- Writing and Testing for Universal Usability, May 4, 2:15 PM to 3:30 PM in Reunion A with Janice (Ginny) Redish, Redish & Associates, Inc., Randolph Bias, Associate Professor, The University of Texas at Austin, and Sheng-Cheng Huang, The University of Texas at Austin
- Web 2.0 and Accessibility, May 04, 4:00 PM to 5:15 PM in Reunion A with
Linda Roberts, SAS Institute
They will be valuable sessions for all who attend. (Note: Be sure to check the schedule at the conference for any last minute changes.
Most Influential Women in Technology 2010
Those who attend the opening session on Sunday night are in for a treat. Actually, that is an understatement. Molly Holzschlag is the Sunday evening speaker. She was just named Most Influential Woman in Technology 2010 by Fastcompany in the Evangelist category. Molly gave an informal talk at the CSUN2010 tweetup where she gave a call to action: let’s stop talking about disabled access and start talking about universal access. In other words, our own “let’s take the ‘dis’ out of ‘disability’”.
General Comments
For those attending the conference, have fun! And wherever you go, remind people of some accessibility basics:
- Speak clearly and repeat all questions if you are the speaker!
- Speak up about your hearing issues if you are the attendee with hearing issues!
- Eschew obfuscation! Push for plain language!
No accessibility conference guide was produced by the SIG this year. I apologize profusely for that. I didn’t give a shout and delegate those tasks in time. My prioritizing went haywire with personal issues. (However, look for something soon that will make up for this oversight.)
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