Tag Archives: accessibility

5.5.3 Technical accessibility review – The Hidden Museum App

Early on in our production we discussed levels of accessibility required for this app.

As a company, Aardman feel very connected to accessible digital products – we have created some highly accessible products in the past, the most accessible of which had to be the Something Special games which include a range of settings for users of all cognitive and physical abilities. We are well versed in the creation of accessible apps as well so we felt well prepared to advise as to suitable levels of accessibility for this product. And in one of our most recent mobile games CBBC’s Escargot Escape Artistes, as well as using only the most simple of gestures to play the game, players can choose to play it using their voice alone – without any physical input.

Since this is a research project and full accessibility can become a project all in itself, we decided that our goal would be to be ‘as inclusive as possible’ within the constraints of time and budget.

As a result, we decided that if we were going to target a single device for this research phase, that we should target iOS devices since these are known that these have the best accessibility features as standard. As a result we decided to deploy to a test base of iPad Air 2’s for this research testing.

We also ensured that all text was a minimum height on screen and that colours used in the designs were compliant with the general colour blindness guidelines for web design.

In terms of the app’s design, at first when we were leading users around the museum, care was taken to establish whether the user was able to use stairs or not. As the game design has moved away from a ‘led’ tour into more of a general guide we have not had to establish this but have always offered users routes via stairs or lifts in the map view of the app to ensure that all abilities are catered for in that way.

Video Subtitling – making content more accessible

We aim  to make the museum more accessible for all visitors and adding subtitles goes a long way to help us achieve this. For example see the video below, of the audio description DiscoveryPens, in use in the French Art Gallery, at their launch event.

DiscoveryPENS launch – at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

I realised that our museum videos too, can and should be made more accessible! – and I don’t just mean spreading all over the world web – but for all our visitors of our website!
Our aim: to increase the accessibility of a video’s content -by using subtitles for all video and audio content.

The simple task of subtitling.
I’ll tell you now: It isn’t too difficult, but it can be considered a monotonous task. I have detailed what I did, with some advice how you can do this effectively. So bear in mind, that in my personal experience and if you have found a better way then let me know:

About 1min of video = 1hour of transcribing

Therefore, before you start, you can estimate how long it will take to subtitle your video. It does depend how long your video is, and how much of it is dialogue! Essentially it is a small thing to do, to advance the accessibility of your video content.

What I did:
• Watched the video and listened to the person talking.
• Paused the video and wrote down the speech in a document.
-this is for record keeping and to make sure there will be no spelling and grammar mistakes! When I copied this to subtitling my video on Youtube.
• I needed to make the subtitles match up to the visuals (usually the person speaking).
• But to have to enough time on screen to be read.

*Helpful tip: -to check if the timing was correct I would turn off the sound and see if I had enough time to read it.

• I would cut the dialogue to a sentence length which I thought looked well on the screen,
• fitted appropriately to the natural pause in the speech,
• and to not repel the editing cuts when the subtitles would change from sentence to sentence.

The cuts between shot to shot should be in accordance to the cuts between sentence to sentence.

Both words and visual cuts should appear smooth and not resisting each other.

• When the sentences were added to the video, in the appropriate place, I would record their start and end time.
• I would add this to the word document next to the deciphered speech.

*Helpful tip: To avoid your transcription document looking like a mass of unapproachable entries, I suggest separating the different parts of your video.

Written dialogue

• For example: Beginning, Middle, and End.
• Or of different people speaking if they are speaking in separate chunks.

This is usually where the video cuts, to a different part – your word document should try and reflect this.

• I also suggest doing this as you go! Your document will look a lot better and doing at the end will be a harder task.