MULTIMEDIA TUTORIAL FOR BLACKBOARD USING E-BOOK TECHNOLOGY SIRISH BATHINA WILLIAM HINDERMAN MONICA CZARNY

GOALS Create an accessible set of video tutorials for the Blackboard Learning system implementing a custom video framework built upon HTML5's and tags Implement a timed text format Implement a audio description track, putting audio cues in spots to pause main video Build the media player framework with buttons to toggle CC and AD display Hadi identified a previous resource from Blackboard Liam Moran - ATLAS Group has made accessible video demo (Flash encoded) Structure to define the elements of the multimedia file to be sent to player The project needs to be extensible

DEMONSTRATION

KEY TECHNOLOGIES Gabby and Hadi create the video script to cover Login, myCourse, Homepage Sirish worked with them to create the video using Camtasia Bill created the framework for the video player Buttons Turn on/off audio descriptions - if on, video pauses, plays audio, then un-pauses Time-elapsed, time-remaining, and jump to certain time (ARIA progress bar or slider) Access key shortcuts

KEY TECHNOLOGIES HTML5 tag Prior to HTML5, there was no standards-based way to embed a video in a web page Set up a video container, used with attributes

KEY TECHNOLOGIES Closed captions are a solved problem for HTML5, the jQuery Javascript library includes a set of functions for handling them pretty easily Use SRT format to add captions, audio track, and chapters Each line gets timestamp, additional information extracted from.srt file SRT files allow project to be customizable and easily edited jquery.srt

FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS Added chapters to navigate to topics with additional SRT file Removed Audio Description chapters to reduce clutter Attempted ARIA slider for more accessible time display High contrast mode for visual impairments Stylized buttons added ARIA compatible button

CHALLENGES Compatibility with different video formats Issues with having the video pause while having only one audio description play Solved using Booleans surrounding play functions Want to attach video sources and text for captioning in a way that is not hard-coded into the web page Solved using widely used.srt format and jquery No resources for best practices on audio descriptions How we solved having to create new audio object each time a new source is extracted from the.srt file for audio description ARIA slider implementation

DISCUSSION ON IMPACT Accessibility for web video and audio is the need of extending content with functionality that allows people with varying degrees and types of disabilities to access content on the Web Functionalities implemented in the project are not only usable for disabled people Audio descriptions useful for those who are multitasking Subtitles useful for those who are in loud environments or internationalisation Overall project was an enormous success Successfully generalized a framework for attaching additional information such as CC, AD, chapters Able to incorporate all concepts learned into final product Project is extensible