This week, I shared the first draft of the script to the first video in my tutorial series, called “What Is Web Accessibility”. The goal of the video is to introduce the concept of web accessibility, how the concept is currently being applied in the industry, and why it is an important thing to learn. After reading the script, I asked a few questions to students to gauge how the script impacted them. Here is what I found:

Firstly, no one was confused by the script. That was a relief. I did have a few people mention that there were a bit too many percentages towards the end, but otherwise people understood the point well enough.

Secondly, a lot of people were very surprised at the state of web accessibility currently. I had several people mention that they didn’t know that there were so many lawsuits over inaccessible websites. I also had a few people mention that they did not know that there were standards and regulations to ensure websites are accessible. One student openly said “wow” while reading my script – she had no idea how bad the situation actually was. I also had a couple students comment that they didn’t realize how many people there were in the US with a disability. Interestingly, several of the students who made these comments had studied web design. I was surprised that even those people didn’t know the full extent of the situation, since when I took IMM 130 (a class that everyone I showed the script to had taken), there was a short lecture on accessibility, which mentioned that you could get sued if your website was inaccessible. Perhaps other sections of that class didn’t include that information.

I asked people what they wanted to know more about after reading the script, and they all said that they wanted to know more about what people can do to make websites more accessible. This is good, since that’s the question that I want people to be asking when they’re done with the video. I’m glad that I explained everything within the script well enough that people don’t have further follow-up questions about it.

On the whole, I’m fairly satisfied with most of my script. However, there are a few things that I will change about it. I got one comment suggesting that I begin the video with a more specific example of what an inaccessible website feels like to use. With that in mind, I will probably rewrite the intro a bit to incorporate that into it. I will also be shortening the segment where I talk about the percentages of people with certain disabilities, since people found that to be overwhelming. I will also add a brief segment at the end introducing the tutorial series, that way people know where to go if they want to learn more about web accessibility.