Initial requirements of deaf students for video: lessons learned from an evaluation of a digital video application

Abstract

This paper reports the findings from an observational study of a digital video library system, DiVA, involving deaf students and students with other medical conditions affecting their use of video material. The Digital Video Applications (DiVA) system supports searching for and playing educational videos, and displays transcripts of the audio track alongside the video. Seven disabled students were observed while they watched nine video clips and then interviewed on their opinions of the system. The study is set within a context of an increasing focus on access to educational technology for disabled students motivated by recent changes in disability discrimination law. The findings of this study confirm the recommendations of existing guidelines that video material should be subtitled for deaf students, and that subtitles should conform to existing standards. It is acknowledged that subtitles may not be available on legacy video material and that transcripts may be a feasible alternative. This paper makes recommendations for the display of transcripts in digital video applications such as DiVA. It also emphasizes that disabled students have a range of different, and sometimes conflicting, needs and therefore the presence and display of subtitles or transcripts should be offered as options rather than by default.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the students who took part in this evaluation, which would not have been possible without their participation. The students’ consultancy fees and expenses were funded by the Open University’s eOU initiative. We are also grateful to Nick Haycox of the OU Survey Office for identifying potential students for the study, Dave Perry of the OU Data Capture Suite for recording the evaluation sessions, and Natalie Eggleston for arranging the sessions. Thanks also to Martyn Cooper, Dr Agnes Kukulska‐Hulme, Dr Ann Jones, and three anonymous reviewers for their very useful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and finally to Dawn Holland for commissioning this evaluation.

Notes

The DiVA web site is available at: http://library.open.ac.uk/waltonhall/diva/.

Since this evaluation was conducted the voice‐to‐text software used to create transcripts has been replaced, and it is now estimated to be 80–90% accurate. In addition the software‐generated transcripts are displayed in paragraphs with upper and lower case text.

See the Research section of the Institute of Educational Technology’s web site for key publications: http://iet.open.ac.uk/research/publications/index.cfm.

Rich Media Accessibility Resource Center: http://ncam.wgbh.org/richmedia.

Creating Captions for Rich Media: http://ncam.wgbh.org/richmedia/tutorials/captioning.html.

Media Access Generator (MAGpie): http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/.

Equal Access to Software and Information: http://www.rit.edu/∼easi/.

International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet: http://www.icdri.org/.

In this paper the students with conditions affecting their use of video material are referred to as ‘students with other conditions’. This serves merely as shorthand and in no way diminishes the status of their conditions.