Spent a partial day with fellow employee Phil Lomboy discussing the finer points of video captioning with Camtasia. I’m looking forward to getting all of my “head notes” into a powerpoint presentation / resource list for more than one person to utilize. We are on our way to a more technologically accessible campus, yo.

Published in In Touch with Student Services, Vol. 16, No. 1

By now most of us know that our websites and other campus technologies need to be accessible. A common question I hear is, “Is my website ADA or whatever?” The mystery of accessibility seems daunting at times, especially when we are flooded with the acronym soup that accompanies it (ADA, ATI, 508, VPAT, OMG).

There are a variety of tools that assist with “reading,” perceiving and using computers. Individuals with print impairments, such as those associated with vision or learning disabilities, commonly use screen readers that “read the screen aloud” to them. People with motor disabilities often use assistive technologies that enable them to access their computers without using a mouse or a keyboard. The importance of textual transcripts for lectures or videos becomes evident when considering computer users who are hearing impaired.

The place to start with accessible technology is to understand the need to integrate accessibility into everyday processes, such as creating Word documents, designing webpages or purchasing software. Building accessibility into a process is much more effective than reaching the end of a project and realizing, “It’s done. Oops, is it accessible?”

The Basics

The following list provides a few basics for designing accessible documents.

• Images and photos must have text-based descriptions to provide relevant visual information to the visually impaired. (For example, a photo of a campus scene may be described as, “Students sitting on the lawn on a sunny day.”)
• Hyperlinks should be written as actions that describe the link’s destination. Rather than using “Click Here,” use “Download the Request Form.”
• Videos and live audio must have text-based captions and/or transcripts. “Type what you hear.” Include narratives for silent portions of videos to provide relevant visual information, i.e., “Little Red Riding Hood walks through the forest gathering flowers.”

As you incorporate accessible design into your daily processes, it will become second nature. The public expectation for accessible technology will eventually be as commonplace as current presumptions that most buildings have ramps and elevators for wheelchair access. We are involved in a fascinating shift of paving the electronic ramps of the future.

Advanced principles for accessible design can be found at http://webaim.org/intro.

Keira Dooley is art director and webmaster for the Division of Student Services.

Static webpages are dying. Each day continue I pump out static pages, one by one…punching that Dreamweaver “put” button like a robot, waiting for the files to transfer over a choaking connection of growing millennial users. Oddly enough I’d rather be strategizing sitemaps in Visio, planning information architecture, using my b-b-brain. The staties probably will ever catch up, due to the current California deficit which our comedic university president has coined as a “draconian budget,” but we might reach 2005 soon.

In 1997, static webpages were the coolest… with those seizure-provoking animated gifs and abundant, inaccessible “click here’s.” Ah those were the days, when a graphic designer off the street could fake it til she made it, learning HTML on the fly with an ingenious trade of a homemade enchilada dinner. (Check out my first website: Electronicohania Bookomineous)

Wait, maybe things haven’t really changed much. The modern webmaster can make a website in seconds. She can push a button, get Wordpress, toss a fancy logo up in the banner area, and “Whalaaa!” The mere thought of this easy web designing process pained me at first. “Those good for nothing web kids are going around making sites left and right! They’re gonna put me out of business!” Then I came to my senses.

The Way of the Web is simply evolving into a content outlet for multiple genres of computer users, allowing for rich, insightful possibilities of prose that escape the dungeons of unsocial techies that never let go of the server buttons. What a concept. Content. Wonderful, luscious, captivating, concise, clever, clear, organized, accessible, usable content.

IMHO, static pages are ready to sit on the same shelf as the Atari console and that old Radio Shack computer that my dad had. They will hold a special, nostalgic place in my heart. I’m looking forward to searching for a “How to make an HTML 4.0 webpage” manual on eBay in about 15 years. Ah the future deprecated memories.