Accessibility and usability of online videos in MOOC context

Accessibility (ease of access) and usability (ease of use) of online videos are meaningful needs to be addressed, especially in the MOOCs context.

Scientific literature is full of information and best practices about users optimal engagement time, the notions of subtitles and transcripts and their usability under standard situations, whether with disabilities or not.

We have to keep in mind that accessibility and usability complement each other: by meeting the needs of specific users who can represent only a fraction of our visitors, we help all the others.

For instance, when we provide high-quality subtitles for people with hearing impairment, it is also useful for people watching the video in a noisy environment, like in a subway, or in places where noise level has to be minimal, as in an office or at the library.

The chapter I have published in “The MOOC case book: Case Studies in MOOC Design, Development and Implementation” entitled “Towards an Engaging and Usable Video Content: Addressing Accessibility and Usability Issues During Video Development” deals with these issues in the MOOCs context, and is also useful whenever a video content is provided.

After a case studies of five MOOCs proposed on three different platforms, I talk about the state of the art of research in the relevant fields.

The MOOC case book
under the direction of Drs. Joseph Rene Corbeil, Maria Elena Corbeil and Badrul H. Khan
Linus publications (2015)
ISBN: 978-1-60797-561-8

Responsive Web Design: some paths to follow

Responsive web design is an area with constant novelties and avenues for reflection, often accompanied by concrete examples of code to demonstrate their relevance. Today, we will focus on the problem of tabs, on readability and the length of lines, on the different uses of the devices and their screen size, before glimpsing on what the future has for us.

Social share buttons are useless

Social share buttons are about everywhere. Ubiquitous on the web, they invite you to like, share or plus the most insignificant page to help its content being seen by hundreds or, why not, even millions of potential visitors. But are they as necessary as they want to make believe?

Windows 8 touch gesture translation

With the advent of touch screens and their matching interface documentations, it may be difficult to know how to translate the different gestures names (to tap, to swipe, to pinch…). Windows 8 offers us a translation for each action in its on-line documentation when we compare its different localizations.

Some news on the RWD front

The responsive design world is constantly evolving, and with it the W3C recommendations and working drafts, in particular concerning the CSS standards evolution. Typography has its word too, and web font usage brings its share of solutions. This articles brings out a series of relevant links and articles to pursue a longstanding discussion.

A transparent screen for Christmas!

In most recent sci-fi movies, transparent screens are widely used: Iron Man 2, Minority Report, Avatar… They all have those future-like interfaces that help us project in a not-so-far future technology paradigm while being relatively close to ours. But why are they so widespread?

The Spam Zombies and the Captcha Apocalypse

Most captcha solutions are based on a text rendered hard to read (or to listen to) by adding some noise to it. And most of the time, this text is randomly generated and serves only one purpose: to stop the spam. Too many humans are challenging captchas all over the world at any time to let their brain process useless data.

What can we do to solve that underutilization of brain capacity?

The European cookie law: solutions

In a previous post, we have seen how different countries have implemented the European directive 2009/136/EC, aka the Cookie Directive. To comply with the local laws of each country, your visitors must be provided with a clear information about how cookies are used on your site (even third-party cookies), and an easy way to consent (or not) to them. We will now see what solutions we can implement to comply with these laws.

Of content and links

The fallow

At the 4^th International Conference about Electronic Document (CIDE, Toulouse, 2001), we have presented, Thomas Polacsek and I, the concept of hypartextual fallow (pdf, in French), a new way to create links between documents.

Writing for both visitors and search engines

When you write on the web, two audiences with slightly different needs have to be targeted: your site visitors and search engines.

What may look like a mere evidence at first sight, as search engines are supposed to put forward the pages which content is primarily targeted to their visitors, above all since the awakening of the Panda, then the Pinguin (and soon the Zebra too?), meets a real need.

Responsive web design

The usage trend tends to be more and more focussed on mobiles and tablets. The web is (and will be) more and more mobile and accessible from anywhere, under largely heterogeneous conditions. We cannot rely anymore on site statistics to know for which specific hardware and software configuration a web site should be aimed, as there is no ideal model user anymore (we can safely say there never was any, though).

If the marketing trend is to focus on sites dedicated to iPhone or iPad due to their penetration rate, it is inconceivable not to be aware of all the other devices, whether present or future, which characteristics differ (or will differ more and more).