Videotapes, DVDs, and streaming videos on the web can be engaging instructional tools. However, the audio portions of these media are inaccessible to individuals with hearing impairments, and visual information that is not otherwise communicated through audio is inaccessible to individuals with visual impairments.
Multimedia can be an engaging instructional tool. Multimedia is increasingly delivered to students through CDs, DVDs, and streaming videos on the web. Multimedia, however, must be captioned and audio-described in order to avoid creating accessibility barriers for some individuals, including those with hearing impairments and those with blindness.
The audio content of multimedia presentations is inaccessible to people who are unable to hear. If there is content presented auditorially, the accessibility solution is captioning that provides a synchronized text alternative to the audio track. For additional general information about captioning, see How do I make multimedia accessible?
Multimedia presentations can be inaccessible to people who are unable to hear the audio content. The solution is to provide captions, a text version of the audio content that is synchronized with the multimedia presentation.
The technical standards and specifications for captioning video are well established and documented. For additional information relevant to online multimedia, consult the AccessIT Knowledge Base article What is the difference between SMIL and SAMI?
For individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing, telephone communication involves communicating by text rather than by voice, typically using a teletypewriter (TTY), also known as a TDD (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf). A basic TTY consists of a keyboard, a display screen, and a modem, which operates over standard telephone lines. If a deaf individual is communicating with another TTY user, both users send and receive text. If a deaf individual is communicating with a hearing individual who doesn't have a TTY, they will use the Telecommunication Relay Service (TRS).
The National Council on Disability (NCD) is an independent federal agency making recommendations to the President and Congress on issues affecting Americans with disabilities. NCD is comprised of a team of fifteen Presidential appointees, an Executive Director appointed by the Chairman, and twelve, full-time professional staff.
Assistive technology is technology used by individuals with disabilities in order to perform functions that might otherwise be difficult or impossible. Assistive technology can include mobility devices such as walkers and wheelchairs, as well as hardware, software, and peripherals that assist people with disabilities in accessing computers or other information technologies.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison was one of the first universities to develop a web accessibility policy. Its development was an effort to make the web more accessible for people with vision, hearing, and other disabilities. The original policy, enacted in December of 2000, was based on the guidelines developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI™) of the World Wide Web Consortium.
My name is Sheryl Burgstahler, and I work at the University of Washington in Seattle. I wanted to develop an Internet-based course offered through the Department of Education and the Department of Rehabilitative Medicine. I wanted to coteach the course with a colleague who is blind and who was a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. I wanted to know how we could efficiently collaborate and share the workload. We had delivered similar content many times in on-site courses and presentations.
As increasing numbers of people with disabilities pursue educational opportunities that require computer use, accessibility of computing facilities becomes even more critical. Making a computer lab accessible requires that attention be devoted to the physical accessibility of the lab facility, as well as to the accessibility of the available technology. Assistive technology (AT) should be available for students who need it. However, AT alone does not make a computer lab accessible.