Can technology help us to communicate in an inclusive way?

In this video, Mike talks about the way he uses recordings, captions and transcripts to help him communicate his subject.

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We tend to assume that if we are speaking clearly most people will understand what we are saying, but on occasions this may not be the case.Have you ever been in a lecture, seminar or meeting room with noisy road works outside? Could you hear all that was said and were you able to fully understand everything when the noise stopped? Perhaps you missed a vital point! What happens when someone is speaking in a language we don’t understand or the topic turns out to be too complex? We have to piece together information and look for other options such as the minutes from the meeting or ask for the lecturer’s notes.If you are blind, have a visual or hearing impairment or find it hard to concentrate, catching up can be a common occurrence and yet there are so many ways we can make it easier for everyone to really gain knowledge when someone is talking about their chosen subject or giving us information that has to be remembered and perhaps retold at a later date. Examples include the use of:

• Notes or slides uploaded to a content management system or virtual learning environment 48 hours before the event.
• Lecture Capture where the slides can be seen with the audio output combined to produce a video that is normally made available on a content management system.
• Closed captions can help us understand content as well as provide access to video content for deaf and hearing impaired students.
• International companies such as 3PlayMedia have been looking into Virtual Reality and 3D video captioning.. 3PlayMedia have more resources relating to making multimedia accessible as do Ai Media who have a free Captioning Guide for download.
• Interactive transcripts with the video of the occasion that allows for searching of key points and annotations – Try Synote with your lecture capture system or upload a podcast and offer a synchronised transcript
• Recordings on an individual’s own device to supplement notes. It is important to check the organisation’s policy, such as that offered by the University of Dundee.
• Portable technology to capture an image of the slides or writing from the board – the results can be enlarged and read more easily with Optical Character Recognition or downloaded to apps such as OneNote or EverNote.
• Use Microsoft 365 PowerPoint or Google Slides to share ideas online – You will need an account. If you want to guarantee your content becomes an Open Educational Resource, turn PowerPoints into accessible online presentations by using the free SlideWiki platform, which allows for online collaboration, slide adaptations by individuals and groups, user playlists, annotations, questions etc.

Can you add to the list of ideas?

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_{© This work is created by the University of Southampton and licensed under CC-BY 4.0 International Licence. Erasmus + MOOCs for Accessibility Partnership.}