Physiopedia Plus (Plus) aspires to create a platform that’s accessible and inclusive for everybody, and on the centre of that is making certain that Plus on-line course content material works for all customers.
Plus programs are developed with accessibility in thoughts. Programs are delivered via a variety of media, and all video content material is offered at completely different playback speeds, with closed captioning and accompanied by each an audio file and a transcript. This was all designed to allow customers with imaginative and prescient and listening to impairments, however we have been eager to search out out if this really works for people studying with Plus. To take action, we lately related with a bodily therapist who’s each listening to and vision-impaired and requested for his perspective on accessing a Plus course and navigating the content material, to assist us to raised perceive his consumer expertise – and we learnt quite a bit!
We learnt that when accessing the course video content material he struggled studying the closed captioning on the display, and as an alternative discovered that he was in a position to hear very effectively utilizing Bluetooth listening to aids, together with having the ability to lip learn the course instructors.
“The video could be very clear, with good sound”
Receiving this suggestions bolstered the Plus normal video format – a ‘speaking head’ on display. In apply, which means that course content material is centred round a big video of the trainer chatting with the digicam. This facilitates lipreading and allows individuals to comply with the video if closed captioning is troublesome to learn. Plus additionally asks course instructors to stick to straightforward necessities for image high quality throughout video recording – this helps us to make sure a transparent, good-quality image to make the visibility of the trainer clear for lip-reading. All the Plus media workforce are additionally educated in audio modifying, ensuring that the sound is of top of the range on the video and audio recordsdata for ease of listening.
This consumer suggestions prompted the workforce to evaluation the closed captioning choices used within the movies to see if this is perhaps improved. Because of this the settings have been up to date to permit individuals to completely customise the closed captioning they see on the display.
By utilizing the “Customise” setting it’s now easy to regulate the dimensions, font, and textual content of closed captions, in addition to to alter the background color to optimise visible readability and enhance a consumer’s studying expertise.
This flexibility in tailoring Plus studying supplies is a step in direction of addressing the challenges confronted by people with imaginative and prescient and listening to impairments in accessing on-line training. As a part of our mission to supply accessible and inclusive instruments for rehabilitation professionals all around the world we now have additionally lately began translating programs and have launched a Plus App. In case you have concepts for enhancing the accessibility of our web sites and digital merchandise then we need to hear from you!
– Due to Plus Training Director Tarina Van Der Stockt for enter in growing this text
