Piggybacking on Kim Hampton’s first-things-first approach (do read it) to ability and accessibility, let me humbly ask that all producers of online audio or video media create a text transcript to accompany it.
This is a matter of access in these ways:
- Some people cannot see and other cannot hear. Text allows people to read, to hear automated text reading and even to use Braille readers.
- Some people cannot understand spoken words when mixed with music, recorded in a noisy space or with inadequate equipment.
- Some people do not have sophisticated hardware or capacious bandwidth to receive media. Indeed, a text can be printed and carried without immediate access to an electronic device.
- Some people cannot recall where a resource lives. A full text allows for (better) web searches.
It’s more work, of course, but it makes the media more valuable and probably more enduring. And while I wouldn’t expect it to be simultaneously published say, at General Assembly, I would want it to be part of the final copy.
Reasonable?
Also, a whole lot of web-surfing goes on at work or in class.