Concept 1 – The Project I’m Planning
My project would be a series of video tutorials explaining how to make websites accessible to people with disabilities. The videos would be aimed at web designers and web developers, and would explain things like color contrast, keyboard navigation and text alternatives in a way that’s easy to understand. The main advantage of the video format is that it places visuals front and center while discussing the very visual medium of website design. Most resources on web accessibility are text articles that use images sparingly. Conveying this information through video would allow me to take full advantage of visual aids, depicting things like how color-blindness affects one’s experience of a web page with greater clarity.
Concept 2 – The Project I’m Planning, Without Video
If I were not allowed to make videos for my thesis project, then I would instead create a website which presents web accessibility information in an intuitive manner that’s easy to navigate quickly. The website would divide the accessibility guidelines into categories (e.g. working with images and video, working with keyboard navigation, etc.) with each category containing useful tips on how to improve certain aspects of a website’s accessibility. The site would include images and HTML code snippets, where relevant.
Concept 3 – As Weird As Possible
If I had unlimited time, resources and skills, I would probably try my hand at making a documentary. I could include video footage, motion graphics, animation, and all sorts of interesting visual tricks. If I had to pick a topic, I’d probably research the history of online video, and how computers and the internet have affected the medium of video. I think that the internet has done wonders for the field of video production – it’s made editing software easier to access and learn, and it’s made video much easier to distribute. I’d love to learn more about how that change took place, and what effects it’s having on the world.
I believe that this first idea is an extremely worthwhile pursuit. The number of people with accessibility issues to certain features of websites is extremely high and with many web design organizations not having individuals with disabilities on their teams or individuals researching accessibility features, inclusive design is often an after thought. Having a visualization of the experiences of people with disabilities attempting to navigate web spaces would allow design teams to be in a more empathetic space having the possible afflictions visualized to them. The third idea of a documentary that highlights these same problems in a more extensive manner feels like an ascertainable goal as well as the purpose of trying to inform people would serve as a great basis for a documentary especially considering the weight it would hold in today’s social climate.
I like your idea for project 1 because accessibility is something that often goes overlooked in every visual medium. I’m guilty of this too, whenever I make something I never really keep in mind what people with disabilities will be able to see or read. The visuals you use in the video could be representative of the concepts you want to explain in the video. It would be hypocritical to explain how to make something accessible to color blind people and then have red and green visuals side by side, for example.
I think the third idea could tie into the first idea in that you could make a documentary about how accessibility in websites has evolved and what web designers have done in the past to accommodate people with disabilities, from the beginning of the web until now.
There’s a lot I really like about your first idea. Your choice to specifically make it a video series would really allow you to demonstrate the importance of accessibility in web design. Your idea to focus on visuals will make this very easy to understand and follow.
Something I really like about your second idea is to include snippets of code where it is relevant. I think that including the code really helps solidify how these principles of accessibility can be utilized. This is also something that might be interesting to include in your series of video tutorials, if you had the time.
One thing I really like about your third idea is that it’s self reflective in a sort of way. By studying and explaining the effects the internet has had on video production, you are also in a way including how the internet has had an impact on your own project. I think that the breadth of the topic will be a benefit. The sheer amount of video on the internet would help demonstrate the size of the impact that the internet has had on video and video production.
The idea behind the first concept is incredibly interesting. It is an aspect of programming that is often overlooked. As someone who has developed websites before (all the way back in freshman year), I honestly gave no attention to the nuances of something like colorblind mode. However, I have had experiences in gaming and but rarely with websites that allow the user to enable or disable different helpful modes. I think this is a great idea and has a good base that can constantly be worked on for the next few months. I also think that both the first and third concepts bounce off each other smoothly with the theme being “easily assessable software for all”.
Kiernan, I think your idea is wonderful! I think this is something more people should be aware of, and not many people are. Not only will your project raise awareness of people with disabilities, but it will also provide a solution to a major platform that everyone uses!
I would say it would be great if you could build a website to set an example, and I also like your idea with the videos. I think a documentary would be great, and it wouldn’t be too hard to create at least a couple minutes of the documentary if you are already creating the videos! I think you should go for it!
Not only is putting more attention into accessibility incredibly important, it’s a human rights issue that has (thankfully) been gaining more and more attention over the last couple years. People who had never considered the issues others face are now beginning to have an understanding, something that wasn’t the case even ten years ago. Your tutorial videos would fill one of the many gaps in accessibility education and would be particularly useful for IMM students, as content creators, to watch. Overall, your idea is awesome.
If I had any thoughts to give you, it’d be mostly stemming from the Deaf ed classes I’ve taken. Videos lack accessibility for Deaf and HOH folks, sometimes even with captions because English literacy can be spotty throughout the Deaf community (difficulty reading is definitely something that a lot of people with visual disorders struggle with as well). I think making tutorials in several forms, such as a captioned video and a printed version with large visuals and large text/mindful language would also be really awesome. Maybe you could even try reaching out to someone in the Deaf Education to see if they could do a version of the video in ASL!
Presenting your first concept as video tutorials to help web developers make websites more easily accessible to people with disabilities is great especially as many web developers already look to video tutorials to learn how to develop websites. For your second concept, it is an awesome idea to present web accessibility information in a website format so web developers can have access to the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that created the website to use for their own by inspecting elements in their web browsers. Your documentary idea is also awesome because online video and how computers have affected the creation of videos is a part of many people’s everyday lives today so it is beneficial to know the history of online video. I am thinking for your first concept maybe you could link to the HTML, CSS and possibly JavaScript demonstrating what you discuss in your videos using a website like CodePen. Maybe in your first or last video you can quickly explain or reiterate why web accessibility is important by using a documentary-like format to explain the history of web accessibility to people with disabilities. This could be a way to persuade more web developers to adopt the techniques your tutorials teach.