Accessibility – Annabel Treshansky's Blog

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Sometimes I wish I could caption literally anything. But at least since the move to home working, I’ve been wishing I could get live captions for online meetings and training sessions. I think transcripts are probably a bit too intrusive without consent, along the lines of making recordings, but live captions would often be so useful.

So I am very happy today, because I have finally found a way to get live captions that I think will work for anything with sound that plays in the browser on the computer. It was developed for Android first and so it involves installing a new version of Google Chrome called Canary, that is still in beta testing.

Here are the instructions:

Download and install Google Chrome Canary from here:
https://www.google.com/chrome/canary/

Downloading Chrome Canary: really liking the all-yellow version of the Chrome logo. I just know great things are ahead…
Visit this URL in the Canary browser where you can change the settings:
chrome://flags/#enable-accessibility-live-captions
Enable live captions
Relaunch the browser
Switch on the Live Captions setting in the browser options (enter this URL to search for it: chrome://settings/?search=captions )

Search for Captions and switch on the Live Captions setting in the browser
You should be able to see captions whenever there are spoken words now. I can confirm that this works with Collaborate live sessions and video playback, as well as Teams meetings in the web browser (although the Teams Desktop App has better caption and transcript options of its own).

Testing out the Live Captions

The first chance I got to try this was in our morning Teams meeting…

So, here they are working in a Teams meeting in the browser:

Live Captions in Teams (Web Browser Version): Good to see them, though again, not perfect – if you have access to the desktop app, click the three vertical dots for better captioning options in Teams meetings. I look a bit goofy in the corner because I’m excited to see this working for the first time!

Here they are, working in a Collaborate video playback:

Screenshot: Live Captions added to video playback in Collaborate

Live Captions added to video playback in Collaborate: They aren’t always right, but they definitely are there!

Here they are working in a Collaborate live webinar:

Screenshot: Live Captions in Collaborate

Screenshot of Live Captions working in Collaborate: looks fantastic, very useful!
Is that Teams notification annoying anyone else?

And here they are working in YouTube:
(Which also has its own captions, but I’m including it as a demo)

Screenshot of captions in YouTube – in this case, very accurate too!
Also, lovely guided meditation, courtesy of The Honest Guys

So, I really like this – thanks, Google!

Can we have slow down, rewind and replay next please? I thought at first, they’re not miracle workers – but I suppose with enough buffering they probably could.

And I wonder if it would work with Google glasses…

Links

Mar 19, 2021

Photos of the User Interface testing process

An Interesting Content Design Meetup

By Annabel Treshansky

On 3rd December 2020

In Accessibility, Usability, UX Design, Websites

Reading Time: 5 minutes

I’ve just spent an interesting evening attending a meetup / webinar called “Let’s Talk Content Design,” hosted by the UX Glasgow Meetup group.

Defining Content Design

Several speakers talked about this quote from Sarah Winters, defining content design:

Content design is a way of thinking… It’s about using data and evidence to give the audience what they need, at the time they need it, and in a way they expect.

— Sarah Winters, Content Design

Dec 3, 2020

Subtitling and Migrant Stories

By Annabel Treshansky

On 21st October 2020

In Accessibility, Video

Reading Time: 4 minutes

One of the unexpected but nice parts of my job lately has been editing the automated subtitles on some of our teaching videos.

This is a requirement for our course materials, to ensure our videos are more accessible for, for example:

Deaf students
Students with other hearing difficulties, for whom subtitles can help with comprehension of fast spoken or unclear dialogue, perhaps spoken with unfamiliar accents, mumbling, or with background noise
Foreign language speakers, for whom the subtitles might help with translation and following along with the spoken text
Students with learning disabilities, attention deficits, or autism, who may find subtitles help them to maintain their concentration on the videos
Students who need to study in a place where they can’t play sound
Students who need to see the spelling of proper nouns, such as full names, brand names, or technical terms
Students who just prefer to watch videos with subtitles as a habit

According to research by Ofcom in 2006, 7.5 million people in the UK (18% of the population) used closed captions, and of these, only 1.5 million were deaf or hard of hearing. 80% of those who preferred to watch with subtitles used them for other reasons.

Since we moved to hybrid learning, we have more and more teaching videos to work on, so that is an occasional silver lining to social distancing for me, as subtitling is a nice, quiet and absorbing task, and our videos are often very interesting 🙂

Oct 21, 2020

Testing the new Subtitle Editing Interface

By Annabel Treshansky

On 5th May 2020

In Accessibility

Reading Time: 3 minutes

You know how occasionally you get a message that just makes you feel so special and appreciated? Well I decided to have done that when I got this:

Subject: Testing for new Media Hopper Create subtitle editing functionality
Dear Colleague,

I am writing to you as you have either attended training on editing subtitles on Media Hopper Create, or have recently requested captions using the service. We will soon be launching an updated version of the automated subtitle editing interface for media content that has been added to Media Hopper Create, and are looking for people to help us test this new functionality. We have some brief testing scripts that we would be asking for help with, and are looking to have testers completing by the end of Friday the 24th of April. If you would like to help with this process, please reply to this email with ‘UAT Testing for Media Hopper Create Subtitling’ in the subject line, and I will send you further instructions and login credentials for the test instance of Media Hopper Create.

Thank for your assistance.

Best wishes,

The Media Hopper Service Team

How awesome is that? Me, a Colleague? I’ve only been back in a full-time job since September! And I can help them because I went to their training! And I LOVE testing things!

May 5, 2020

Keyboard with a key that says Accessibility

Writing Accessibility Statements

By Annabel Treshansky

On 30th April 2020

In Accessibility, Websites

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Website Accessibility
Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Today I attended a very interesting training session on Accessibility Statement Writing, run by some of the Disability Officers.

One point they stressed several times was to get an accessibility statement started and published, which could then be improved upon. They suggested using automated tools as a good place to start, although they wouldn’t catch every potential issue.

Useful links for reference:

Apr 30, 2020

Geophysics blogging means Equations!

By Annabel Treshansky

On 7th February 2020

In Accessibility, HTML, Useful Tips

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Following on from my previous post, ‘Geophysics blogging means new HTML entities!’, I discovered the maths was getting yet more complicated, with the need to represent equations like this:

Really complicated equation 😬

Ideally, I didn’t want to use images, for accessibility reasons, unless I could provide a meaningful alt tag, which takes me back to the original problem of representing the equation in text, but with less useful characters. Here’s a page with a lot of equations as an example: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/easc080162019-0sv1sem2/2020/02/06/7-2-1-electrical-resistivity/. I’ve made a lot of progress using HTML entities, but they can only get me so far.

Feb 7, 2020