Composing projects that are accessible and usable

Consider what format works best for your audience. For many projects, your instructor is your main audience. If your instructor doesn’t tell you the format in which you should submit your project, ask. It’s better to know up front than to wrestle later with converting a project from one interface or delivery system to another. For other projects, you might have different audiences—the campus community, for instance, or YouTube users in general.

To best create for your audience, you have to know the characteristics of audience members, their technical expectations, and also the technical specifications of your delivery choice. For instance, if your instructor has asked you to upload your project to your course management system for everyone to view, that system might have a maximum upload file size, so you’ll have to compact and compress your file in order to share it. YouTube and other video-sharing spaces often have time restrictions; YouTube restricts general users to ten-minute clips.

Build in accessibility features. If, for instance, you suspect that your audience might consist of people who don’t hear well or at all, you might include captions in your project. The captions might describe the sounds in your video ([MUSIC] or [STUDENTS NOISILY WALKING DOWN HALLWAY]) and might also include written text for what’s being heard or said in your piece.

If you suspect that your audience might consist of people with vision difficulties, you might include a text-only transcript of your piece. Most people with visual impairment use a program called a “screen reader,” a piece of software that reads the text on the screen to them. Screen readers, however, cannot easily translate text saved in a slide show presentation or in a movie. Providing a transcript of your piece for a screen reader helps make your work accessible to those with vision problems.