Accessible Media

Alt-Txt: A Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever happily runs along the shoreline with crashing waves in the background.

Before this class, I did not realize how much is done without making it accessible. What many people think are pretty pastel colours for special videos, others cannot actually see. I also never really thought about how other people do not have all the options of videos that most people without impairments can access.

It should be really important to add subtitles on videos, but I realized that this can be hard. If a video is short and straightforward, it is quite easy to add subtitles because it does it for you. If your video has more elements like music and lots of talking, and/ or is very long, adding subtitles can be really hard and exhausting for people so I understand why the average YouTuber won’t often add them. I hope that this will become easier as time goes because google will be better at making subtitles and you will not have to change and type as many words as before.

For my video, I had to try out a few before this one. For one of my videos, we spoke in southern accents, and the subtitle thing was so wrong, then I used a video that was just a song and it did not have half the lyrics. Finally I tried this video and it knew it for the most part but I had to change quite a few things.

I think making things accessible is very important but it is important to keep in mind that it takes a lot of time and sometimes people need to help each other.

• XOXO Brooke