Jessica “Jay” McKay:
Hi, everyone. Thank you for coming and joining us for Be A Digital Ally. I am Jay McKay, Director of Community Programs, and we welcome you to another monthly edition of what is becoming our favorite part of the month to be honest. We've been having a great time doing these. So you are here for Be A Digital Ally: Visual Information Part One. As we were building it, we realized there was too much to put into one month, so we'll break it up into two. There it is. Great. So for our slides today, if you want to follow along, it is going to be a bit.ly link, so it's going to be bit.ly/VisInfo1. So it'll be a capital V as in Victor. So it'll be V-I-S and then info with a capital I and then just the number one. Molly or Erica, somebody can put that in the chat for me as well.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
Okay. So thank you all, of course. If you had been joining us from month to month, we thank you as always. If you are watching this as a recorded session, I'm just going to give you a little heads up because we want to make sure that we value your time as well. A lot of this little first intro part may look very familiar, and feel free to skip forward if you need to. For those that have been here with us before, if you need to go run and grab that snack, that's lovely too, but we just want to make sure for all our new participants and visitors that we've kind of got everybody on the same playing field. We're going to do this little intro every time, but we thank you for letting us be a part of your journey. And at Be A Digital Ally, we always strive to create an inclusive and accessible spaces and part of that is providing that background knowledge and kind of providing that rev-up, so these 10 minute intros that are very, very familiar, it's to make sure, again, everybody's on the same page.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
Of course, we want to make sure we are kind and polite and respectful to everybody, so that includes in the chat, in the comments, and then ensuring accessibility. That includes the materials that we provide, any additional accommodations. We have the live captioning through Zoom available for any of you that need to attend next time and you're like, "Hey, I really need to have live captioning," or "Hey, these Google slides aren't working for me. Can I have it as a PDF or as a PowerPoint?" Just let us know and we'll make sure we get that taken care of for you. All right. We're just going to do some quick introductions and let you get to know the staff here. Of course I am Jay McKay. As I said before, Director of Community Programs. I am a white female in her 40s. I've got short brown hair. I'm wearing glasses. And right now today, I am sporting my big gaming headphones. So take it away, Molly.
Molly Moore:
Great. And I am Molly Moore. Hi everyone. I am a community engagement Specialist at Knowbility. I'm a white female in her mid 30s thirties with blonde hair and I will pass it to Erica.
Erica Braverman:
Hi, I'm Erica Braverman. Molly and I engage the community together as community engagement specialists, but I also run our Access Works Usability Testing Program, and I am also a white woman in my mid 30s. I have brown hair, which is a a bun today. I'm wearing glasses and big blue, white earrings, and I will pass it on to Cesca.
Francesca Castleron:
Hi everyone. Welcome. My name is Francesca Castleron. I am the accessibility analyst over here at Knowbility. I help audit websites. I am Asian, in my mid 30s, and female.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
All right. Okay. Oh, there's my thing. So just a little bit about Knowbility. We were founded in 1999. We are a 501C3 nonprofit. We're based locally, technically in Austin, Texas, but really we operate globally. We're coast to coast really. We have people on both ends and in the middle and everywhere in between. And of course our mission is to create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities. The way that we really do that is through education, awareness, and advocacy. These are just a few of the community programs that we do to further that mission of bringing education, awareness, and advocacy. That includes AIR, which is our Accessibility Internet Rally, which is currently up and running in terms of registrations, so we do encourage you if you're interested in joining a team or if you are a nonprofit organization yourself and you're looking to be a part of it, or a community at org, and you want to know more about AIR, please check out.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
We just wrapped up our AccessU, which was our big annual tech conference, so that's why you didn't see us for the month of May. AccessWorks is our usability testing program and then we have our K12 Digital Accessibility, which it's several different pieces. One of which is our K12 Access Summit, which is... We're really excited. It's our annual K12 virtual conference and I'll actually have a slide at the end about that. But really, we do all of this through donations and support. So if you want to throw us a couple extra bucks, we do greatly appreciate it. Every little bit helps. You can do that by going to Knowbility.org/donate. Or if you are interested in sponsoring any of our events, we do encourage you to email our development director at sponsorship@Knowbility.org.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
All right, so you're here for Be A Digital Ally. It is a monthly series with the goal of covering basic skills to get you started in accessible web design or digital design, and really just make sure that content is accessible to people with disabilities. You may be a content creator of any skill or you are new to accessibility, so I always give the example, you are the person that got nominated as your community org's social media director because you're the person who has their own Facebook account, or you could be somebody who is doing web design, but now you're just kind of looking at it from the perspective of accessibility. Our learning objectives today or just kind of a rundown of what we're doing. We're going to just do, again, quick overview of what accessibility is and assistive technology for those that may not be familiar.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
We're going to also talk about what we mean by the word visual information, and then also talk about audio description, as well as good tips for visual description practice, and then, of course, questions at the end. And we did get some questions in our email, so we'll make sure that we address those as well. All right. So when we talk about accessibility, what are we actually talking about? What does that mean? I have a definition here that I have fused together, so to speak, from our friends at W3.org and from the AEM Center, which is out of Cast. For something to be accessible, it's not just, is it available, can I get to it, is it on the shelf and I can grab it, for something to be accessible, and especially when we're talking about digital accessibility, for it to be accessible, people need to be able to perceive it. Can they hear it? Can they see the content? Understand. Do they know where they're supposed to go, what they're supposed to do or what to expect, so do I know how to get to the link I need?
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
Do I know that I'm supposed to find a link and do I know what happens when I click that link? Navigate. Can they independently navigate using their preferred tools? So if I need to get to a specific link and I can't use a standard mouse, am I able to do that with some kind of IGA system? Am I able to do that with a keyboarding system? Interact. Can they independently complete those tasks and explore all the areas? So again, we want them to be able to see your whole site, engage with it fully. And then lastly is contribute. Can they fully participate in an authentic manner? So if somebody is not able to navigate and interact or understand or even know that content's there, they're not going to be able to participate and fully engage and be able to communicate or see when that next event's happening or find a way to volunteer, so we want to make sure all of those things are covered in accessibility.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
Why is it important to design for it? 15% of the world's population lives with some form of disability and several people may not actually consider themselves to be disabled as it's defined by WHO. This could be some people who are using hearing aid devices as they age, but they don't necessarily consider themselves disabled. But under the World Health Organization's definition, they would be considered disabled. But also, really another or one of the reasons a lot of people don't think about accessibility, is how many people actually benefit that don't necessarily even have a disability at all? Think about captions. How many of us are using captions when we are streaming content? How many of us prefer to have the doors that automatically open instead of having to push them? All of these things really do benefit us.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
All right. So in talking about visual information and audio descriptions, we saw some really good information and stats that came from 3PlayMedia. There's an estimated 82% of the world's internet. Traffic is video, and that's a percentage that's growing. Okay. So more and more content and more and more stuff that people are engaging with is video, so we need to make sure that's accessible. Also, research is showing that 20$ to 30% of students say they retain information through sound. That's actually not a lot. That's less than half of students are just taking in information auditorially, so they really are seeking that visual input or getting something that's of a more visual content. Then over 285 million people globally have some form of vision loss, while 39 million people are blind, so there's a lot of visual content. People are asking for it, but then also we have a large percent of people that aren't necessarily going to perceive it as just strictly visual content.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
So in talking about that, we also want to look at assistive technology. These are two definitions, and I won't read them out completely because you'll have access to those slides, but this first one from ATIA is that AT is any item or piece of equipment, software, program, or product system that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of a person with a disability. So again, it could be a raised surface, it could be lined paper. It could be just my standard phone, but now I'm using voiceover on it. All of these different things can be assistive technology. And the World Health Organization has added some components to that, but they're really, especially this last line I like, the primary purpose of these products is to maintain or improve the individual's functioning and independence, thereby promoting their wellbeing. So really, it's that idea of independence and overall wellbeing. It's that quality of life.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
All right. So just a couple of examples of assistive technology, and we'll talk a little bit more about them later on in the slides, but things like screen readers, refreshable braille, alternative navigation methods, like keyboards or switches. A lot of people can't use a mouse, a lot of people can't just touch things on their phone, so how are they going to get to those apps? How are they going to get to those links on your site? Closed captions. We already talked about. Transcripts. Magnification. Just to zoom things in can be considered assistive technology. Then dark mode or a high contrast. We also provided the WebAIM examples. These are great. They actually have some more in-depth pictures and descriptions. I think there's actually a couple videos with them as well. As we start our journey this evening into visual information, we always want to remember this quote because for a lot of people accessibility, they feel like they're afraid to do something wrong and so they feel like it's better not to do anything because in that way you don't make the mistake.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
But really, that's not the way we want you to think about it. The idea is to "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, you do better," and this is a quote that comes from Maya Angelou, so this is always one that's in my head. I'm going to do what I can until somebody tells me a better way to do it and then I'm going to take that knowledge and move even more forward in my accessibility journey. We're excited. I hope you are too. Take it away, Cesca.
Francesca Castleron:
Cool. Thank you, Jay. All right, Introduction to visual information. You can go on next slide. All right. Assistive technology is technology that helps accommodate an individual who may have functional limitations. Who benefits from all of this? Well, lots of people. People with disabilities. The elderly. People with noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes and stroke. People with mental health conditions, including dementia and autism, and people with gradual functional decline. At the end of the day, accessibility is really, it's a benefit for everyone. There are different types of assistive technology which help the blind or visually impaired users. We have screen magnification. This allows visually impaired users to increase the size of text or increase the size of an image. Screen readers allows blind or visually impaired users to read the text that is displayed on the computer screen.
Francesca Castleron:
Then we also have braille embossers. Braille is a system of raised dots that can be read with the fingers by people who are blind or who have low vision. So many times when I'm on my phone, I'll be scrolling through it and the text or images might appear very small for me, so I'll just zoom in to view the content. I also had a friend who would use a screen reader while they were simultaneously doing other tasks. Very beneficial. How to get the most out of these assistive technologies? We're going to dive into discussing different types of images. Our first one, we have informative images. These are images that graphically represent concepts and information. Typically, pictures, photos, and illustrations. The text alternative should be at least a short description conveying the essential information presented by the image.
Francesca Castleron:
So in this example, we have an image or an icon to signify to the user that whether or not it is a phone or a fax number. A lot of times, while I am auditing websites, I often find that these are forgotten. As long as you provide an alternative text to the graphic or icon, then you can inform the user which phone numbers these correspond to. Our next one, we got decorative images. For decorative images, you can provide a null text alternative, so this is just an empty alt. This is when the only purpose of an image is to add visual decoration to the page rather than to convey information that is important to understanding the page. So in this example, say, for example, you were visiting a website about dog walking. It might have a picture of a dog. And while this might be visually aesthetic, it's not necessary or useful for the screen reader to announce.
Francesca Castleron:
The goal here is not to overwhelm the user with verbose language. This can be debatable. I had a colleague who is visually impaired who preferred to know what the image was even if it wasn't informative. They just wanted to be able to know everything that was on the page, so it's not wrong to add an alt text to all of your images. I think at the end of the day, it's better to provide accessibility versus none at all. But also, if you are unsure whether or not an image should have alt text W3 a helpful tutorial that is an alt decision tree, and I provided that link right there on the slide.
Francesca Castleron:
All right. So our next one, we have functional images. The text alternative of an image used as a link or as a button should describe the functionality of the link or button rather than the visual image. So in case you're wondering, I think this is a great example. So if you have a search input with an icon that is a button that has a magnifying glass, you don't want the alternative text on that magnifying glass image to be magnifying glass. If it's functional, you want to be able to inform the user what this button is actually doing. So the purpose of this button, you may want to put submit search or even just search. And for our next one, we have text images. This is readable text is sometimes presented within an image. If the image is not a logo, avoid text and images. However, if images of texts are used, the text alternative should contain the same words as the image.
Francesca Castleron:
So in this example, you'll see that it's a image of text without using HTML and CSS. This is just graphically illustrated. Whenever possible, try to use HTML and CSS when creating images with text because when users zoom in on an image, the image will tend to become pixelated or it will be hard to read. So whenever possible. Just try your best. For this next one, complex images, such as graphs and diagrams. They convey data or detailed information, provide a complete text equivalent of the data or information provided in the image as the text alternative. Here we have a bar chart of website visitor statistics, and the short description is provided in the alt text. You can also put a link under the diagram or graph, linking it to plain text that has a more in-depth explanation of what data is in the graph or diagram.
Francesca Castleron:
Here we have groups of images. If multiple images convey a single piece of information, the text alternative for one image should convey the information for the entire group. So what's going on here is I got this picture off Yelp. They have a four out of five star rating. So instead of adding an alt text for each of those stars, what you can do is for the very, very first star, you provide an alt text that says, "Four out of five stars," and then for the rest of the stars, you can leave null, as in an empty alt text or empty alt tag.
Francesca Castleron:
All right. Why is this important? Images are used extensively on websites, which can create major barriers for the visually impaired, including people with low vision. Images and graphics make content easier to understand and serve as cues that are used to help orient users within the content. So for this reason, it's very important to make sure that all images are accessible. Next, we have creating accessible videos. So for videos, to be able to perceive audio, you need hearing. To see a video, you need vision. Audio and video, you need hearing and vision. In order to make videos perceptible to all audiences, you need an alternative for both the audio and visual elements. Some people who are blind or have low vision are unable to see videos well or at all. They use descriptions of visual information in order to understand what is going on visually, so it's best to provide captions and a separate transcript as this is helpful for those using a screen reader.
Francesca Castleron:
Audio and video media. When making these, these are a couple of important points. You'll want to use low background audio, speak clearly and slowly, pause between.
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:23:04]
Francesca Castleron:
Speak clearly and slowly. Pause between topics so that you can give people time to process the information. Use clear language, so you'll want to avoid using acronyms or jargon. And integrate description into the main audio content. And here we have auto play videos. So on an important note, don't use them on your website. The audio that automatically starts playing completely obscures the speech of the screen reader, rendering the page inaccessible. auto play videos can distract visitors from finding the content that they need and they also take up bandwidth that your visitors might not have in their connection. So oftentimes if a video automatically starts playing, the site might load extremely slow, which also causes bounce rates. So don't use auto play videos.
Francesca Castleron:
Descriptive transcripts. These are needed for most videos to be accessible to people who are deaf and blind. They meet a wide range of accessibility needs, including people who have difficulty processing auditory information and people who cannot focus or comprehend auditory or visual information when there is changing visuals. It's also used by people without disabilities. Easy and inexpensive to develop using captions and description. And the great thing is captions and transcripts use the same text. So once you have one, it's fairly easy to develop the other.
Francesca Castleron:
So in this next slide, I have an example of audio described in a snippet of The Lion King. And so you'll get an idea for how this works, how it's more descriptive and we'll go ahead and play this for you.
Speaker 1:
Hundreds of animals gather at the bottom of Pride Rock, a tall flat ledge that towers over the rest of the Savannah. Zazu, a small blue bird with a large beak, flaps to the ledge. He bows to Mufasa, a powerful dignified lion with a thick red mane.
Speaker 1:
Rafiki, an elderly baboon with white hair, slowly climbs up to the ledge and hugs Mufasa warmly. They walk back to a cave where Mufasa's wife, Sarabi, cuddles a tiny lion cup in her paws.
Speaker 1:
Smiling, Rafiki bends over Simba, the baby lion and shakes his walking stick, which has two melons tied to it. Simba swats his paw at the melons playfully. Rafiki breaks one open. The wise old baboon dips his thumb in its juice and draws a line on Simba's forehead. Then he takes a handful of sand and sprinkles it over him. Simba's parents, Mufasa and Sarabi smile and lean their heads together. Rafiki, who is much smaller than the adult lions, takes Simba up in his arms. Carrying him like a baby, he walks slowly to the end of the ledge, then holds Simba high in the air for all the animals to see
Francesca Castleron:
Perfect. I remember the first time I watched an audio described video. I forgot what was the purpose of why I was watching it because I was so absorbed into the descriptions. But yes, we are going to dive more into audio descriptions and Molly is going to take us through that. Go ahead, Molly.
Molly Moore:
Yeah. Thanks Cesca. So we're going to do a deep dive on audio description now. As Cesca mentioned, audio description is the track that tells people who are not taking in the visual information what visual information they're missing on the screen. It's often used for blind or low vision users. Typically, people will insert it into the natural pauses in a video, like we just saw with The Lion King clip. And similar to closed captions, you'll know if something has audio description track available by this AD symbol that looks very similar to that CC, closed caption, symbol. So yeah, that will let you know on Netflix or YouTube, if you are able to add audio description to what you're watching.
Molly Moore:
And we do have another example here. So I think just pay attention to the language used in this. And we'll talk about it.
Speaker 2:
In a logo, stars twinkle in the sky, our view drifts down through clouds to a river that winds past hillsides. A train crosses a bridge. As a flag waves on the top of a Castle's tallest spire, a bright display of fireworks explodes in the sky. A glowing pinpoint of light arcs over the castle, leaving a trail of sparkling dust. Words appear, Disney.
Molly Moore:
Yeah. So I really like that example because the flow of it is really great. The narrator describes everything that they're seeing as they see it and they use really precise, specific language that's extremely descriptive and active. So I just think that's a great example of audio description.
Molly Moore:
So let's dive into a little bit of the history of how audio description came to be used. So in 1980, the media programming group of WGBH-TV, who was also really instrumental in creating closed captioning, created something called an SAP, which is a second audio programming or second audio program, as a way to deliver audio description over broadcast TV. So that would just be the track data add on to transmit the audio description. In 1990, theaters began implementing audio description through the use of headsets. The production company Theater Vision was one of the first companies to do this and Forest Gump, fun fact, was one of the first films to use this service. So they really got that idea from museums, which had been using audio devices for a while and headphones to deliver content about the art, as well as just description of the art.
Molly Moore:
In 1998, Congress added section 508 to the rehabilitation act of 1978, which required federal agencies to make everything that was electronic and information accessible to people with disabilities. So all videos that are put out through the government and through the federal agencies must have audio description included. And in 2015, Netflix announced that Daredevil would be their first movie to offer an audio description track, which was good marketing for them because Daredevil is blind. So they made a big celebration of the fact that they were starting to do audio description, but it also had to do with, we'll move to the next slide.
Molly Moore:
In 2010, so it is in the law as well that they needed to start doing this. The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, CVAA, was passed by Obama. Its goal was to phase in audio description requirements between 2010 and 2020. I think this happened exactly the same spot last time for me. And in 2020, there was a proposal submitted to expand those description regulations by phasing them in to new markets each year for four years. Because as you noticed, we are past 2020 and not everything is audio description, but this is where a lot of the streaming services have gotten the push to start implementing audio description.
Molly Moore:
And then we have the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG. So AAA is the gold standard for accessibility, but AA is what's necessary to be considered accessible. And audio description is required for WCAG 2.0 level AA for prerecorded, synchronized video media. So if you want to meet accessibility requirements, you do want to include audio description in any video that you put out.
Molly Moore:
So now we'll talk about a few different ways to deliver that audio description. We have live video audio description, which is what we're doing now. You'll see this, if you're doing a presentation, either recorded or not recorded, you're describing any visual elements as you go. So anything that is on your screen or on your slides, you'll go ahead and include a description. That means you won't have to go back and rerecord an audio track later. So you'll already have your audio description included in your video and you can go ahead and just put that out. It also gives your live audience the benefit of audio description. So if you have blind or visually impaired audience members or you have audience members who aren't looking at their screen, for whatever reason, they get that benefit as well.
Molly Moore:
And then also what's cool is live audio description can be used in live performances, like at a play or at a movie. Our good friends at Art Spark are really great at this. And it's cool to see an audio described play, if you haven't gotten the chance.
Molly Moore:
The second option is recorded audio description. And that is that second audio program we talked about earlier, which really got the ball moving on what audio description might look like. If you have recording equipment at home or at your office, you can write out a script for your audio description and record it while you're watching your video content. You want to do that. So it's very matched up with the timings of your video. You can then merge that track with your source audio and put out a second video that includes audio description track.
Molly Moore:
And now we'll talk about different types of audio description that you will use. There's standard audio description, which means like The Lion King video and the Disney logo video, that audio description is able to fit into the natural breaks of narration. They didn't have to pause the video to fit more in. They just said it exactly as the video is recording. For extended audio description, you will need to pause the video in order to insert that audio description. And this is helpful if you have a video with a lot of dialogue, but you have some important visual elements that you need to get across.
Molly Moore:
And we can talk a little bit more about that second audio program. So basically it's that auxiliary audio program for analog television that can be broadcast over the air and now through cable. It's the way you can get audio description and programming in another language on your TV on live TV. And that 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act that we mentioned a little while ago has made it so all TV and cable networks must provide a quota of audio described programming. So they need to provide at least a certain amount of audio described programs, which they keep track of with those SAPs.
Molly Moore:
Okay. And then you can have a text only audio description. So you will always want to, if you're creating your audio description after the fact or you're adding audio description to a video, you will want to write out a script because the timing is really important. But you can just provide a audio, I think we had a question in the chat. Yeah. So a descriptive transcript would include these descriptions along with the captions. So it is a little different. You'll want to include the timings so your audience members can follow along and make sure all the details are lining up with what's going on at that time on the screen. But it doesn't offer quite as much accommodation as an audio track. So always, if you can, go with audio description. Best practice is really to provide both.
Molly Moore:
And then finally you can outsource your audio description. A lot of times, you might be running short on time and there are many professional description vendors that can go ahead and do that for you. We've listed a few here and I just want to point out the Audio Description Project at the bottom. That's a really cool library of different audio description vendors and resources. It's not the best, most well designed website, but it does have a lot of really great information.
Molly Moore:
Okay. Now we can talk a little bit about how to create effective audio description. So there are three core skills that go into creating good audio description. First, you want to make sure you are just observing. You are not observing as Molly or as Jay, you are just observing exactly what's going on on the screen. We'll talk a little bit more about what that means in a minute. But you also want to analyze, you want to pick out why a certain piece of visual information might be more important to the overall message of the video than others. And then finally you want to communicate, you want to use precise language, specific language and keep as consistent with the tone as possible. And again, I would recommend looking at that Disney video again, just because they use really great language in that.
Molly Moore:
Okay. So for tip number one, we have describe what you see and that's the observe portion. And that really means that what you want to do is just watch the video and take in exactly what's happening visually on the screen. You want to avoid adding anything extra, such as information, not provided to sighted users. Don't add any fun facts about what you're seeing. Any lessons, analysis or conclusions, that's going to be subjective and really not necessary to what's going on at the moment. Don't add any context. You want to just trust that is self-evident. And then don't add your own opinion or interpretation. So keep it objective, not subjective.
Molly Moore:
Tip two, prioritize the details you include. So yeah, there's going to be a lot of visual information on this screen and it's a video, so things are moving really fast. You won't be able to include every detail, so you'll need to make choices. You'll really just want to choose the details that are most important to understanding the content as a whole. So you'll probably, if you're creating a script yourself, you'll want to go ahead and watch the video a few times before you even start doing the audio description, because that will make it easier to know, oh, does the person will really need to know that those curtains are red? I won't say why that's a spoiler. And then action. Finally, action is often more important than setting. So rather than describing that it's winter in the Alps you'll want to describe that there's a train running off the tracks in the Alps.
Molly Moore:
All right. Tip number three. This is a little contradictory it sounds at first, but it's include everything. That really just means don't censor. Even if the material makes you uncomfortable, that goes back to avoiding any sort of subjective opinion, going into your audio description. This is because what might be offensive to you might not be to another person. It also may leave out something really important that the person would need to know to get what's going on in that whole video. So making editorial choices rather than just describing what you see makes it more likely that your audience will wind up confused. They hired you to write audio description, not to edit the movie.
Molly Moore:
Finally we have tip number four, use the present tense. So like we saw on both of those clips, they spoke in present tense. What exactly was happening on the screen at that time. So yes, you want to reflect exactly what's happening as it's happening. It does confuse your audience if you switch tenses. For instance, if you said Rafiki held Simba instead of hold Simba, you might wonder when was he holding him? Maybe I missed that. So just keep it present. Otherwise you are likely to confuse your audience. And use just good plain language rules by using active tense and short sentences. So we do have a plain language via digital ally that you can check out on our website.
Molly Moore:
Tip number five is be consistent. So first off, that just means once you've named a character or a place or object, just stick with that name throughout. Your audience is already going to have to be juggling a lot of nouns and characters so take it easy on them and just pick one name to stick with. Don't start calling a character Scrooge and then later Ebeneezer, because they won't know who Ebeneezer is. Keep your tone. So the second thing it means is a little different. It's keep your tone, word choice and pasting consistent with the overall tone of the piece. So avoid pairing a dramatic video with a chipper voice and vice versa. You don't want your audio description to stick out like a sore thumb.
Molly Moore:
And tip number six is be creative. Similar to all text, there are best practices and guidelines for creating good audio description, but you will still ultimately be the one in charge of what to say. So go wild with or no, don't go wild, but try to use a colorful vocabulary, use precise nouns, descriptive adjectives, and active verbs to paint as accurate and vivid a description as possible. And that can be really fun.
Molly Moore:
All right. So finally we do have a little bit of practice. So usually at this point, good audio description practice or visual information practice would be to describe what the contents of the video we're about to watch would be. But for the purpose of this practice, I won't do that. We'll talk about it afterwards though. So for this practice, if you want to just throw in the chat a few elements, you'd want to be sure to include in your audio description. You don't have to write out a full script, just maybe throw out some things you'd want to communicate to your audience,
Speaker 3:
Squishy. Hey, Squishy. Fill the cheek, Squishy.
Erica Braverman:
And this is where I would make the joke, like any good scripter of audio description, we should watch it again.
Molly Moore:
Yeah. Not a bad idea.
Erica Braverman:
For the sake of time, we'll keep it to one.
Molly Moore:
And we do already have quite a few-
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:46:04]
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
And we'll keep it to one.
Molly Moore:
And we do already have quite a few great suggestions in the chat. So, from Carlos, we have, "Hand offering food." That's a great one. Lindsay Foster says, "Squirrel being fed nuts by human hand." Jolyn says, "Squirrel eating out of human hand." "Fat cheeks." Definitely. Very cute. Kelly says, "Squirrel runs across lawn to man holding nuts." That's great, and that could really operate as your full description. And Jock says, "Very cute squirrel eats peanuts and shells from a man who talks to this squirrel." And I love that. That's also accurate and gets the tone across.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
And I think too, for me, when I'm watching it, I would think of every time I would say the next time he grabs a nut, the next one. So, it just kind of gives that idea of exactly how many nuts is this squirrel going to get in there?
Molly Moore:
And, yeah, so we did have a solution or just some suggestions too, but again, this is a creative... This is where... There's no hard and fast rule. Everything you all said was exactly right. So, the elements, I thought, were the squirrel, the lawn, the hand, the nuts and the full cheeks. So, the script I wrote was, a squirrel runs across a grassy front lawn to a man's open hand, which is full of nuts. The squirrel fills his cheek with the nuts one by one, eventually fitting all of them in his mouth at once. And that's a little long, I mean, I really liked the really brief squirrel runs across to lawn to open hand and eats nuts. That also totally gets the point across. Okay. So, that's it for audio description. And I'm going to pass it over to Erica for visual description.
Erica Braverman:
Thank you, Molly. So, we're going to actually, in this section... I know that we talked about visual description kind of in the title of our be a digital ally tonight, but I'm bringing us back there, because for the rest of our presentation, we're sort of going to be touching on everything that we've been talking about before. We're going to talk about some of the concepts that Jay talked about. We're going to talk about some of the things that Cesca talked about, and Molly talked about, but we're going to also be taking those items and techniques, and we're going to practice applying them in some of the more typical scenarios. We're talking about them in the context and more typical scenarios when we might really need to be using visual description sort of in the wild, and maybe on our own, and need some frameworks for that.
Erica Braverman:
So, we're going to start out just revisiting this idea. What's the sort of nutshell description of visual description? Visual description is either spoken or written. It's an interpretation of images or a series of images on display. So, sometimes it's just one image. Sometimes it's more than one. And visual description can include alternative text, it can include the relationship between multiple images between images and text, and the relationship between images and navigational function. So, there's no one master visual description. It really depends on what the visuals are and what they're doing. So, lots of different ways that visual description can exist. And why do we need it? Well, first of all, because this is be a digital ally, because we're nobility, we always love to start with accessibility, which as you know, is very important. But how exactly does this play out? Why does visual description make these things more accessible?
Erica Braverman:
Well, we talked about screen readers. We talked about magnification. And people with no vision, or sometimes low vision, might be using a description to perceive the content of an image or slide. Maybe they have it really magnified in depth, and so a description helps them get the full picture. They could be looking at just one small part of the visual, or they could be using a screen reader and taking everything in via audio, or a screen reader and a braille output display. And also, people with some types of cognitive disabilities would use a written or verbal description to understand the content of an image.
Erica Braverman:
Sometimes taking things in visually is not the best way for people to get what they need to know. And that ties into the concept of better information in general, for everyone. If you get information from a picture and a description together, it can help you understand content much better than you would with an image alone. I remember when I was little and I was learning to knit, it always helped me if I got, from whichever adult was showing me how to make a particular stitch, it always helped me if they explained what they were doing as they were showing me, as they were demonstrating. So, I mean, that's a perfect example of getting a audio description and a visual together, and that being a better experience. And then I think we've all been here for this next one.
Erica Braverman:
If you're multitasking, you're doing two things at once. You're watching a webinar or a video. You're trying to do something else. And then that webinar becomes a podcast. You're not looking at it anymore. You're just listening. It can be really helpful to get a full description of the slides or whatever the content is. And I left this off, and I'm very embarrassed that I left this off, because before I got into accessibility, I was a language teacher. Language learners can also really benefit from a description because it helps them to concretize the language. They might have seen a word come up, or heard a word come up, and they're not quite sure the meaning. But then when it comes up in the description of an image and they see the object, they say, "Oh, I know what that is." And it helps them cement, okay, so I was right. It is that thing in the picture. It is the socket wrench, the weighing scale, the judge, the attorney, whatever they're looking at in the picture for that unfamiliar word.
Erica Braverman:
And then when do you need visual description? We're going to really today talk about two particular instances of this. The first one is like we are now, in a presentation, slideshow, or a discussion involving visual information. Having a visual description of those diagrams, images, or other components of a slide allows participants to comprehend all the information, even if they're not using vision. And then this is something that it took me a while to really understand when I started learning about how people use screen readers. You can, and you should, add alt text to any image in a slideshow. But if you're just perceiving those slides through Zoom, you can't use a screen reader to read the alt text. You can't use a screen reader to read the text on the page. It really is just a picture.
Erica Braverman:
And so if someone's using a screen reader and they don't have those slides, they really don't have any context without a good description. And then the second scenario is on a website or other online resource that contains images, so most websites, also social media, anything like that. So, those image description support accessibility. They also support visitors with slow connections. Alt text will display even if the picture never loads. So, if the alt text is there as a visual description of the image and something goes wrong with the internet, you can still convey what's going on in the picture to people visiting the site. And image descriptions can help improve SEO. Obviously, if the keyword... This is not a blanket statement, if the keywords are related to the topic of the page, that will bump you up in the results. So, it's not necessarily...
Erica Braverman:
If you're talking... If the picture is about something completely different than the topic of the site, then that would not necessarily be the case. So, if it's on topic. We had some question about that, so I wanted to draw attention to that. But in general, they can't help with SEO. All right. So, it's late at night and you are working on updating your website. And you're tired and you want to finish quickly, and you're trying to remember how to visually describe all these photos that you're adding, right? So, where do you start? The first thing to do, I recommend, is to think about the type of image it is and its purpose. What is it? Why do you have it? And the best way to do that is to go back to those types of images that Cesca described and look up the best practice for that type of image, right? You don't need to review all of them, trying to figure out what it is. Think about which type first, and then go read the description for just that one, because there's a lot of detail in those tutorials.
Erica Braverman:
So, once you get there, where does it fit in the categories? And then how do you need to set it up? Read the information, take a look at the tutorial. I have a link to those tutorials in the slides, and I really do recommend you check it out. So, you've got the idea of what you need to do for the description. You've described the image. And then think about, is there information that you want to share about the image that's not contained within the image itself, right? Alternative text can only express what's in the image. If there's other information you want to share, you have to display it a different way. So, that might include the year the image was created. It might be an old photo, and you want to tell people this photo is taken in 1942, but you can't really tell that from the picture.
Erica Braverman:
Or if you're showing a piece of artwork, you might want to have the name of the artist or the materials they used to make it, or maybe a story about something in the image. This is my little race car that I built in second grade, right? And here's a picture of me with my race car, right? But you can't tell that I'm in second grade or I built my race car in school. That is external. If you have information like that, you might want to think about adding a caption, generally below your photo visually, as part of your image description. It's describing the image, but it's going beyond the alt text to convey additional information. And those captions will get picked up by a screen reader, if it's a site that's navigable, or it would be something to share as part of describing a presentation. We're going to get to that in a little bit.
Erica Braverman:
And then we are going to move on presentations right now. How about that? All right. So, you finished updating all the photos. And then the next night, you have a presentation to put together for some potential donors or customers or some community event. And you're trying to figure out how do I audio describe all these slides? Well, one thing that is key to think about first is that you're going to need to describe the text on the slide. It needs to be conveyed verbally, if you're giving your presentation live. If this is going to be something that people are watching later, or maybe you're prerecording, it's going to be a recorded slide and it's never going to be presented live, you need to have audio available to convey the material, the text on the slide. And that goes back to screen readers will treat a Zoom screen share as one big picture. So, that's why it's so important to share that information verbally. And then images on a slide. And that's all images. That's logos, maps, charts, graphs. All that should be described verbally or via audio while you're presenting.
Erica Braverman:
So, what belongs in the visual description of the slide? Right? What do we really need to think about in more granular terms and nuts and bolts? We've kind of gone big picture. So, headings and texts. That includes... So if I was... As I'm going, for example, I say what belongs in visual description, and then heading some text. I get the title, and then the content. So, headings and text, that's important. And then make sure to include any text as part of an image. And coming back to what Cesca said earlier, it's best practice to not have text be part of an image, but sometimes it's unavoidable, right? You might have a picture of a road sign, and people need to know what the sign says. So, you want to include that text as part of an image in your description, and then any text on the slide, paragraphs, bullet points, whatever you have. Descriptions and images, certainly the information from the alternative text, the information that would go in the caption.
Erica Braverman:
So, this goes back to kind of the same concepts as what you put on the webpage, very similar. But then you also want to think about relationships between text and images. So, why is the image there? And what does it have to do with the text? Is the text talking about something in the image? Is the image an example of something in the text? How do the two fit together? And then any action that occurs when you click the image. Maybe that image is going to be a link. So that when people are using these slides later, that might take them to the webpage where the image came from. All of these are important. And I think we're [inaudible 01:02:10]. Yep. So, we have some tips for presentations coming up.
Erica Braverman:
First thing, if you're thinking, "Oh gosh, where do I start? This is too much," well, the first thing first is to go through your slides, find all the places you have images. And remember, this is any type of image, could be a logo, could be a map. Write the alternative text for your images first and add it to the slides. That way, when you're finishing your slides, you won't be worrying that you've missed a piece of alt text. So, nevermind the visual description. For your own piece of mind, do your alternative text as you're planning all this out, and including that in your slides for people who are viewing them later, people navigating through with a screen reader. Then once you have the alternative text first, only then start to think about what else do I need to explain that's not directly in the image?
Erica Braverman:
Captions are a great place. We talked about captions. But if it's longer, maybe it's someone turning butter, an old painting of someone churn butter, and you want to talk about the artist, you want to talk about the type of paint and style they used, when was it made, and then how people actually churn butter, that should probably be paragraphs, because it's a lot for a caption. So, think about what do you want to do there. Then put the information in a logical order. Does it more sense for your presentation to describe the photo first? So, "Woman in a sun bonnet, churning butter, painting woman in a sun bonnet churning butter." Or, does it help to talk about, all the content, the artist, the materials, churning butter, and then say, "You also have an image. It's a painting of woman in a sun bonnet churning butter."
Erica Braverman:
That depends on your presentation. And feel free to try it out a couple different ways, see what flows better. Speaking of which, practice your presentation with the descriptions. Make sure you get all the text and images together. Okay? It might help to go a slide at a time. It might help to go a topic at a time, but just give yourself some time to work through audio description, if you're new, or visual description, if you're new to it, so that you can prep before you're actually giving this presentation. When you're practicing... The second slide of tips here, when you're practicing, what if you notice that those slides are feeling too wordy when you describe, and it feels uncomfortable, it feels clunky, what can you do? Well, the first thing you can try is splitting those information [inaudible 01:05:16] slides into two or three shorter slides to give yourself a little more space as you describe, and also breaking information into manageable chunks.
Erica Braverman:
If it's not manageable for you, it's probably not manageable for your audience either. So, breaking that information into manageable chunks also supports accessibility. It gives people more time to process that cognitive load. And then now that you've put all this work into your description, you want to save it for later, right? You want to keep a record of that good description you just did. If you have an option to share a video of your presentation, that's great news, because the description will be contained in the video from you presenting it. If you have the option to share only the presentation slides, make sure that each image in the slides is correctly described. People will be able to pick up the text with a screen reader. They can zoom in and out magnify, but that image description with alt text and any other information is also going to really help there.
Erica Braverman:
Well, I think we have one more slide of tips for presentations. This is a good question. And this is something that has come up within nobility, and also in plenty of other settings. Should speakers visually describe themselves? So when I, at the beginning said, "Well, I'm a white woman in my mid thirties." I talked about my hair, my glasses, my big earrings. Should I say that, or should I skip it? Well, the answer is, that's up to you. Everyone has a different preference. There's arguments for and against, based on how people feel about these descriptions. Some people feel like it's superfluous, but some people feel like it can be useful to help share information about the speakers, and that can serve several purposes. Sometimes people want to talk about... And this comes up frequently talking about race and ethnicity. Sometimes people want to say, "Hey, I'm a person of color." And that's part of their voice weighing in on a particular issue, lived experience as a person of color, and including that in the description of themselves can support that.
Erica Braverman:
Sometimes it might introduce something fun about a person to lighten up the mood. I'm in a really boring office right now. There's a blank white wall behind me, but maybe I had an interesting piece of artwork on my wall or a silly picture or something that I could share as something just fun, or sometimes it might introduce something about me to give me some credibility. If I was talking about buying your first pair of glasses, and I describe that I'm wearing glasses, I might have some extra credibility in my conversation because I've obviously bought a pair of glasses. But then some people don't want that description. So, it's really up to you. And then next, what if you've a slide with a video? How do you talk about that, or how do you bring that in with description? Well, the first thing to ask yourself is, do you have the option for participants to access an audio described version of that video you want to share? Can you include it? Can you share it with people? Can you make it available?
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:09:04]
Erica Braverman:
Can you share it with people? Can you make it available? If not, you might need to make your own version of the audio description available. Whether that's if you're making your own video, you might bring in the audio description, or you might give a little description before, "This is what's in the video for context," if that's not available.
Erica Braverman:
And then describe the video's relationship to other components on the page. The video is a space in the page or space in the slide, similar to how you might describe a photograph. Not that it's a static image, but you might have the video before a certain piece of text or after this visual component. Think about where you might position it, like how you might position a photograph.
Erica Braverman:
Here's some tips for images here before we move on. If you're struggling with how to write alt text, one really good piece of advice that was given to me was, think, how would you describe the image over the phone? If you were describing the image to someone on the phone who couldn't see it, what would you need to describe within the image? What's a good summary of the image. And then also think, how does the image fit in with the other information on the page or slide. If it's an image of... And I'll always remember this when I was learning how to write alt text, my coworker at the time, Nick Steinhaus gave me a picture of a man skiing on a sit ski, which is adaptive ski for people who use a wheelchair and he's skiing down the hill.
Erica Braverman:
And he said, "How would you describe this photo"? I said, "Well, I'm a little stuck because I don't know is this something from a ski company that offers adaptive skiing classes? Is this man, is he a competitive skier? Did he write a book and this is just a fun picture of him skiing that is on his author website"? And he said, "Yes, it could be any of those. You have to find the context". So maybe there's something important about that image that I really want to make sure is in that description. For example, if I run a skiing lesson company and we now offer adaptive skiing lessons for people learning to use a sit ski, I want to say, "Man skiing down a hill on a sit ski".
Erica Braverman:
So it depends on what the context is. And we can move on. Oh, wait, no, we, can't. Sorry. I've got two more resources on this slide. I got too excited and this is good, so I do want to stay here. The first thing I want to talk about is just to remind you like all of our previous Be a Digital Allies, you can go back and review our Be a Digital Ally on alternative text. It's linked in the slide. We have a transcript, we have a video. Also the Web Accessibility Initiative tutorials on image description. Those are excellent. They have examples and procedures and tutorials for all those different types of images that we talked about. So I highly recommend checking that out if you're getting stuck on how to write for a particular type of image.
Erica Braverman:
Now we can move on. Sorry, Jay. All right. So we're going to practice and send different examples of situations where you might need to apply image description and I want to see what we think here. So the first one we're going to do is visual description of a digital slide. Not this slide. I want to know how you provide visual description of the next slide. It's very confusing to have the instructions and then the slide, so I made them two separate. So we're going to go onto the next slide and I'm going to hold off. The slide is up. I'm not describing it just yet. I want to give you guys a few seconds to think while I'm talking here. I will describe it and then we're going to go onto the next slide after that. And then talk about some of the points that were in my description, if that makes sense. It's very hard to hold off and not describe the slide after I've been talking about it.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
So we'll give everybody about 30 seconds. If you had things that you think need to be included in the description, go ahead and put them in chat, and then we'll discuss as we described.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
Oh, they've been chatting away about all kinds of good chats.
Erica Braverman:
Been chatting away. Ah, yes. The character count limit for alt text. I've heard 400 absolutely max, but that is a lot. That is a lot. Okay. I'm getting some great descriptions coming in, talking about the image. I'm going to start describing the slide. Feel free to keep the descriptions coming as I talk. All right. So we're onto our next slide, which is Volcanoes in Hawaii. So the Hawaiian Islands were created millions of years ago by volcanic activity. And in fact, two of the world's most active volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa are located in Hawaii. And when they erupt, they're still erupting today, they change the geology of the islands and we have an image here of Mauna Loa. It happens to be in the process of erupting. Right now it's shooting out some bright orange lava. And this is from its last major eruption, which was on April 3rd, 1984. And this is courtesy of the National Park Service.
Erica Braverman:
All right. So I see some good... Oh, good question. Is it smoke or clouds? This gets a little bit... So in the picture of volcano, it looks like there's some cloudy vapors around it. I thought it was steam from water, but I could be wrong too. I think that might be a best guess situation pouring down the side of volcano. So these are great descriptions of the image, but one thing I want to really highlight here is that we're talking about the whole slide too, and that all of the slide is really functioning together, like one big image. And it sounds like some research would be required for that detail. I agree. I'm probably going to be looking it up this evening because I'm curious. So in my description of the slide, I included the heading, Volcanoes in Hawaii.
Erica Braverman:
There's text on the slide. There's an image caption about when it erupted. And then I described the image. So my alt text, which was an image is volcano erupting, shooting bright orange lava from the top. But I liked the person who said it's actually flowing down the side as well. That fits in really nicely with the context about changing geology actually. And then I had my information source. So I wanted make sure all my texts and images were included together in that description. And it takes a little practice. It really does. I've had to learn this too.
Erica Braverman:
All right, we're going to move on to our next practice. Again, I'm going to hold off on describing. I am dragging up my intro just a little bit, but if you have some ideas of what this complex image represents, feel free to pop them in the chat. Take some time, think about it. And in just a little bit, I'm going to start describing the image and then feel free to keep the descriptions coming while I start my description. And then we're going to touch on some of the main points on the next slide. So I'll get into my description now.
Erica Braverman:
So we have here a number of US households who keep pets. It's a bar graph of the number of different types of pets represented in these different households. So the total number of US households with pets is 84.9 million. And then we have a breakdown by pet. So dogs at 63.4 million, cats at 42.7 million, fresh water fish at 11.5 million, and then we have birds at 5.7 million, reptiles of all types together at 4.5 million, horses at 1.6 million, saltwater fish tie with horses at 1.6 million and then other types of pets group together at 5.4 million. And this comes from www.spots.com, which is a pet owner information website.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
So I have a question, Erica. So if I'm doing this presentation and I don't necessarily, my purpose of the slide is not so we know every single number, but maybe I'm trying to highlight something specific. That might be something else to think about in terms of how you are presenting this information in that visual description?
Erica Braverman:
Yes. And I want us to go onto the next slide because we will talk about just that. Jessica's backing me up tonight. I have two different types of descriptions and I see some great feedback here. Kelly, I want to get back to what you said about an HTML table in just a minute. So keep that in mind. Bar chart, this is great sharing the data. Absolutely. So I'm doing this in two different ways. I've written out the alt text for this whole bar graph basically, as I said it before. It's the number of us households with the pets, the 84.9 million households with pets and then all the information about the dogs, the cats, freshwater fish and horses, et cetera. And I'm not reading out the full description because I just read it, but it is the same information.
Erica Braverman:
But then just like Jessica said, this is a lot. It's a complex image for a reason. It's complex. So what do we do if we want to give people the option to skip over that whole long thing? If you are putting this on your website and you want to do just that, what you can do is you have the option to give a short description, as long as you are doing that in combination with the full longer alt text. So this could be, and the way I did it here is a short alt text with option for longer.
Erica Braverman:
My alt text is bar graph showing the number of US households keeping pets, full description at, and I put a link there with that full long description. This is easiest to do. If you are a coder, you can do this all in HTML. And if you're thinking Erica, "I'm not a coder, what do I do"? You could make a short caption. You could take even that title of the graph, maybe crop it out, make that the caption, US households keeping pets, or bar graph of US households keeping pets, full description at, put the link in the text of the page if you are using a block editor or something like that, that is an option.
Erica Braverman:
Now what if my whole presentation or my whole page, if I'm making a webpage, is talking about how popular dogs are in the US. And I really want to talk about dogs and how great they are. They are pretty great. I could pull out a relevant detail from that graph if it supports a short description and I want to include it. So I could say, "Bar graph showing the number of us households with keeping pets. Dogs are the most popular pet at 63.4 million households". That could really support my argument here or why it's so important to talk about dogs. You can do that too. But again, that depends on the context.
Erica Braverman:
I'm going to go pretty quickly through this last one. And Kelly, that is an excellent resource. Thank you so much. Jack, that tutorial has several really good examples of complex images. I would start with that section first, for sure. Oh, and what Kelly said about the HTML table, that can be a great asset to have in your full out description. That's a great way to display all that information and in the tutorial they do show just that. So I'm glad you brought that up.
Erica Braverman:
This last one is a group of images. I'm going to go pretty quick. So start-
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
I would say, Just go ahead and just... Yeah, I was going to say, just go ahead and do the description.
Erica Braverman:
Yeah, because I want to give us five minutes. Sorry y'all. So this is edible plants native to Texas and I have three different types here. I have a photo of a Purple Passionflower. It is indeed very purple and it has these curly threadlike petals. And also have it's Latin name, if you are into Latin names, Passiflora incarnata. It's a great Latin name. And then we're moving on the Agarita, which is a shrubby plant with long stems and they're really covered in green leaves, small green leaves and some round red berries. And the Latin name of that Agarita plant is Mahonia trifoliolata. I had to practice that would a few times. And then last but not least, we have the Meadow Garlic. So this is a small plant with greenstalsk and each stalk has a... You know it by the little cluster of white flowers at the top. This is Allium canadense, those playing along at home.
Erica Braverman:
But before we move on, I have a really important safety first notice for everyone who is interested in foraging for wild plants, edible plants. Do not eat wild plants unless you're absolutely sure what they are and what part is edible. So might just be the roots, might just be the leaves. Very important to check first and go with trusted source. And all of these wonderful photos came from the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center.
Erica Braverman:
We can move right along the next one. This one had a lot. This one had the heading, the Purple Passionflower caption. Describe the image. Same for the Agarita, the caption, describe the image. The Meadow Garlic, describe the image. And I describe the image using the alt text that I shared. So I will read them out actually. Purple Passionflower, purple flower with the curly threadlike petals, the Agarita is the stem with the green leaves covering it, the round red berries. And then the Meadow garlic has green stalk with white flowers. And then I had my safety notice in my source. Happy snacking, don't die. I like that. All right. So we're going to move on to some good resources here to close this out.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
All right. So these are just some resources, again. The other resources in the slides as well. And if you didn't get a chance to download the slides, we'll make sure that they are up on the website within a couple days. But of course we have our friends at W3 talking about low vision video descriptions. Again, 3Play Media had a nice training on Audio Description, ArtSpark guidelines, and Best Practices for Describing Educational Videos is a really great link as well. And then again, the Audio Digital Project, we gave you a link that was just taking them to vendors, but also just their whole library of information. All right. So we've been having some good questions and chat. I know we had gotten an email. Let me see if I can pull it up without completely collapsing the screen. But if somebody wants to talk about that a little bit while I pull it up, or if somebody else has the email up.
Erica Braverman:
Yeah, I thought that was a really interesting one. And I came up with how I would do it, as we pull it up. So I'm going to describe the image. It was a map of several countries in the Middle East, and it was showing different territories, if I remember correctly, that were occupied by different kingdoms over time. And the context was the history lesson, world history lesson. And how do you audio describe these images? And so the first question... Oh, here we are. Oh, thank you, Jessica. The first biggest question is, should we use the countries to describe the spaces that were occupied in these different time periods? And my answer was yes, because even though there's no text, although I would say adding some text here could help contextualize the map, maybe for students who are trying to match the country with its name by shape, the country is indicated by the border.
Erica Braverman:
So I would say yes, that using the countries would be a great way to contextualize what these territories are. The second question was, should we use the names of the countries as they are now, or what these countries were called at the time of these expansions, at the time of these governments? That's a really excellent question. And that's definitely important information, but there is no queue directly from this image that says what these territories were called at these different times. I would put that in additional text on the slide or the page, what they were called, just to support that part of the learning process. But I don't think of that as associated with the image. So that was a really excellent question. And thank you for sharing the map and your questions with us.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
Okay. There we go. So we are wrapping up. Thank you very much. We know this was a really dense session today, so we do have a survey for you to take. So if you want to go onto our https://bit.ly/JUENBADA, and we would love for you to do that. So if one of my lovely teammates can put that in chat for me as I go to our next, which is our K12 Access Summit. Oh, I forgot to increase the font on that. This is our annual education virtual conference. We're really excited about it this year. We've got some great presenters and content. For more information, you can just go to https://knowbility.org/k12access. This is a free virtual conference. We had some lovely donations and sponsors because they know that this was important to get it out to our teachers.
Jessica “Jay” McKay:
And again, if you would like to be a part of helping those programs, going to our donation page, contacting us at www.sponsorship@knowbility.org. We would love to have you be a part of that as well. All right. So last note of slides here is of course, join us. Oh, and I have the date wrong on here. Apologies. We have our next data coming up July. It'll be July 21st. So it'll be that Thursday. And you will be able to get all the links and information at https://knowbility.org/DigitalAlly. And that'll be a capital D and a capital A. We will get the June video up, hopefully fairly soon. We hope to have it up by the end of the month. That way you can catch all that information and then when we move into part two, you'll be ready to go. So thank you all. We love doing these. We hope you learned a lot. The chat was great today. I've got lots and lots of resources for myself to steal and make sure I get to put it in there. So.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:31:25]