Avoiding video avoidance - part 1

As a result of recent legislation, most educational institutions are required to meet technical accessibility standards for their online content - the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), version 2.1, level AA. At face value, these have challenging requirements for video and audio - requiring 100% accurate captions for deaf people as well as audio description of relevant visual content for blind people. As a result, many teachers and lecturers are not using video because they can't invest the considerable extra time required to make the videos “compliant”. They avoid using video. This article looks at the impact of this on disabled people and suggests alternative approaches that allow practices to improve. Part 2 will look at a Risk Assessment based approach to using video effectively with your learners.

Unintended consequences

Focusing on compliance instead of user experience can have two unintended consequences which create barriers for disabled users.

1. Some organisations continue to use videos but invoke “Disproportionate Burden” as a blanket exemption. This allows them to avoid improving their practice with video.
2. Other organisations take a very risk averse approach, removing videos from the learning platform because they do not have the budgets to create “compliant content”.

The first approach has a negative impact on disabled students. The second approach has a negative impact on everyone, including disabled students.

The purpose of this discussion paper is to

• show how context must be taken into account,
• reduce the risk of unintended consequences,
• provide organisations with a suggested roadmap for improving video accessibility.

Videos are an alternative format

Text creates its own accessibility barriers to many disabled learners. Many courses deliver most of their content as text. Tutors may decide to create a video version of the content. Where a video explanation is providing no more information than a text alternative, the video does not require captions. For some learners, a short, uncaptioned video clip may be much more accessible than the equivalent content in text format. If, however, the video introduced new information that was not explicit in the text, it would need to make the new information available to everybody using one of the methods in the sections below.

Purpose is paramount

Videos can be used for different purposes. Geology can be illustrated through a tourism video. A debate video may illustrate legal arguments, non-verbal communication or rhetorical devices.  In each case, the best accessibility solution could be different. Captions and/or audio description are not the only solutions nor always the best solutions. A “compliant video” that ticks the accessibility box but does not serve the learning need has created a barrier, not a solution. Sometimes a rambling interview is better summarised in a few bullet points compared to captions or a transcript. The teaching purpose should be the guiding principle.

Getting practical

The appropriate practice will depend on the purpose, as outlined above, as well as other factors such as the tools available to the creator, their skill level, training and support available. The nature of the audience, criticality of the content and expected longevity of the video is also significant, as explored in the final section.

Technical issues

There are 3 key technical issues when using videos with learners: how you distribute it, where you distribute it and what player it plays on.

1. How - streaming video (eg YouTube, Vimeo, or a streaming server in your own institution) has the advantage of not taking storage space on the learners device. It has the disadvantage of needing Internet access in order to watch the video.
2. “Where” and “what” may overlap. If you are embedding video into a learning resource, it is important that the video player is keyboard accessible. You can test this easily by using the tab key to try to move focus to the video controls. Use enter or to start and stop the video. Vimeo does not currently (2020) support auto-captioning but will allow you to embed externally produced captioning files. YouTube has the advantage of providing automated captions for English language videos.

YouTube’s automated captions do not currently meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines but;

• For some speakers, in some contexts, they achieve high accuracy,
• For other speakers/contexts accuracy can be much less but they may still add significant value for many learners in their raw state.
• They can be edited fairly quickly. And, where the narrator is correcting their own captions, they will have a vested interest in speaking more clearly!

Teaching issues

Over recent years, many organisations embraced digital technologies to move away from didactic “chalk and talk” methods of teaching. This has usually resulted in more inclusive and engaging teaching, but with the current technologies and resources available it is likely that these organisations will have to strike a balance between WCAG compliance and technology enhanced learning. If compliance is prioritised over learner experience, two bad options come into play:

Bad option 1

The easiest and cheapest way to get 100% compliance is to have no lecture capture, provide no videos or animation and rely on static course content consisting of no more than carefully crafted word documents. This might be good for compliance but would be a retrograde step for disabled learners in particular, and education in general.

Bad option 2

Within the UK context, organisations can claim disproportionate burden if it is clear that the cost of accessibility improvements are disproportionate to the overall budget of the organisation and the impact on beneficiaries. Having made the disproportionate burden claim, the organisation can – in theory – make no improvements until it’s time to reassess the accessibility statement a year later.

Pragmatic alternatives

None of the options below will give you 100% WCAG compliant multimedia. What they will do is provide something more accessible than a raw video clip. They also provide institutions with minimum thresholds or progression routes for improvement. Most importantly, doing something is  better than doing nothing.

Workflows and scripting - these approaches can save time yet add significant value.

• Check if you even need captions. We saw above that where a video explanation provides no more information than existing text, the video does not require captions.
• If you are doing a short introductory video (for example flip learning) then create a script. Use Microsoft Words inbuilt Dictate option, or the automatic speech recognition on your mobile phone or tablet. A script keeps the narrative tight and provides a ready transcript you can upload at the same time.
• Describe content via narration. An issue for blind people is understanding the visual content the lecturer is talking about. If the lecturer simply describes the image or graph they are referring to it can reduce the need for separate audio descriptions.

“Adding value” roadmap- when you have multimedia, the following options represent a rough sequence of added value.

• Summary - a few bullet points or explanatory sentences can draw out the main teaching points for everybody.
• Transcript (autogenerated using technology tools) - this may not be 100% accurate but can add value for people wanting to skim content for specific dates, names et cetera. At the simplest level, re-speaking the narrative into a Word document using Word Dictate will get you started.
• Transcript + (human generated or autogenerated & corrected) – the increased accuracy reduces the risk of confusion.
• Captions (autogenerated using technology tools like Google Slides or PowerPoint autocaptioning) - being synchronised with the visuals, captions can add value by enhanced understanding.
• Captions + (human generated or autogenerated & corrected -  increased accuracy reduces the risk of confusion or misunderstanding.
• Audio description. This is a way for blind people to pick up on relevant visual content in the video. Some videos will need it more than others and some will require professional in creating it.
• Alternative resource. Video is a great tool for many learners but sometimes a disabled person will be guaranteed a better experience with an alternative resource /activity targeted to their strengths. A tactile model of a molecule may be far better to a blind learner than an “accessible video” of the same.

Ultimately, digital accessibility is about culture change. All or nothing choices – “be 100% compliant or don’t be online” - are dangerous. The “don’t be online” option is attractive to many teachers and lecturers. And, ironically, accessibility standards don’t apply to non-digital content. We all have memories of badly photocopied handouts in tiny fonts (to save paper) from our own school days.

So we need to steer a path between legalism and realism, a path that raises awareness without raising hackles and that encourages skills rather than excuses.

In part 2 we’ll explore how combining a maturity approach with a pragmatic risk-assessment framework might provide a vehicle fit for your roadmap.