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Re: Evaluation: Accessible Interface to YouTube

for

From: David Andrews
Date: Apr 29, 2009 1:40PM

You name Home Page Reader as a screen reader in your survey. It was
discontinued years ago, and wouldn't support ARIA, I would ask about
"system Access" a low-cost screen reader attaining some popularity.

At 02:08 PM 4/29/2009, you wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>I can't claim to be a long-term subscriber, but I'd appreciate a favour if
>possible. I'm a final-year Computer Science student at Newcastle University
>and for my dissertation I've been investigating the effect which what we
>call "Web 2.0" has had on accessibility.
>
>As part of this investigation, I've implemented what I think are some good
>practices, and to demonstrate a number of them working together I've created
>a somewhat simplified interface for YouTube, which you can find at
>http://tube.majestyc.net/. It makes use of technologies such as JavaScript,
>in line with what we can reasonably expect on the web nowadays, but also of
>things like WAI-ARIA live regions to aid the use of such dynamic scripting.
>Similarly, the video player uses a Flash object, but controlled by
>JavaScript firing from standard HTML buttons, instead of using buttons
>integrated into the Flash object itself.
>
>In order to evaluate what real-world users think, I've set up an online
>questionnaire, available at the horrible address of
>http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/128706/accessible-youtube, and via TinyURL at
>http://tinyurl.com/aiyt-eval. It's built using the website Survey Gizmo and,
>while it's not exactly perfect from an accessibility perspective, it's a
>pretty clean page and after a quick run-through myself with JAWS I didn't
>find too many glaring problems. I'd have liked to have built a system
>myself, but unfortunately simply haven't had time.
>
>Some people have questioned my use of YouTube, given that many of the site's
>intended audience will have visual impairments. However, not only is it a
>good demonstration of multimedia on the web, I don't think we shouldn't
>dismiss a video site outright. So many users are partially sighted, and the
>impact of YouTube across the web - and, arguably, society - has been
>enormous. And, let's not forget, it provides audio as well as video.
>
>Many thanks in anticipation of your responses, every single one is greatly
>appreciated. I am running somewhat behind schedule, so I'm looking to gather
>as many responses as possible in the next few days. If anyone knows of a
>good place to post this, let me know, or feel free to simply quote this
>message.
>
>There's a link on the 'Thanks' page to email me if you'd like to see an
>electronic copy of my dissertation when it's finished, but anyone
>(questionnaire or no questionnaire) is welcome to email me directly and I'll
>add you to the list.
>
>Once again, you can find the site at http://tube.majestyc.net/ and the
>questionnaire at http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/128706/accessible-youtube (or,
>if you trust a TinyURL link, at http://tinyurl.com/aiyt-eval).
>
>Thanks for reading,
>Tom
>
>