Chris Smith from NC Virtual education was the October 20, 2021, Quality Matters (QM) Success Stories session. Smith shared their background and work. Prompting us to define accessibility in the chat, Smith mentioned that we often look at accessibility from the legal or accommodations perspectives. Chris had a slide with a title that stuck with me: promoting independence with the text “While there are legal implications associated with digital accessibility that we must adhere to, our main goal is to design our course content to promote the ability to interact with the course independently.” Then, Smith played a video of a visually impaired student using technology to read a Spanish quiz. Smith mentioned the SeeingAI app to “describe visuals” and was developed by Microsoft. Then, Smith presented a 2016 National Geographic short film entitled What It’s Like to Read Lips which was based on an essay by Rachel Kolb.
Chris Smith then shared a video with audio narration. The “before and after” was distinct: the on-screen text helped convey the message. Smith then demonstrated the use of GoogleSlides live captioning. I didn’t know you could set it to work automatically. I will change my settings now.
For hyperlinks, Smith recommends not using “click here” and describing hyperlinks more clearly. Smith played a video of a Davidson County Community College staff member using Dragon software to communicate through verbal commands. This example is a video that Smith has played at other webinars I have watched. To make text accessible, color should not be used to emphasize text; instead, use bold and italics. For alternative text, Smith had several suggestions. One that I didn’t know about was using a Google Extension to capture text embedded in images. In the chat, W Postles mentioned using Snagit Grab Text option to grab editable text from images. A remarkable feature I didn’t know about!
Smith shared slides: QM Success Story-Walking In Someone Else’s Shoes-The True Impact of Digital Accessibility – Google Slides that will be a helpful reference. I noticed that linked to the slides, Chris Smith has a website with a free online accessibility course. I will encourage undergraduate students working on public-facing products to complete the training.
