Support creation of assets that have accessibility
This page captures the capabilities required in sourcing solution to support creation of assets that have accessibility.
Overview
Making assets accessible to persons with special needs is important to ensure systems developed using Sunbird become inclusive. Towards this, this page details the capabilities of the sourcing infrastructure of Sunbird to enable creation of assets that are accessible to various special needs.
Following are the high level capabilities envisaged based on the current understanding of the needs:
Enable easy access to the content accessibility guidelines
Enable storing of accessibility information of an asset
Enable assets created using Sunbird editors support accessibility features
Enable uploading transcript to videos
Note:
All the capabilities will be developed as configurable features (at system and tenant level). The implementation can choose the set of features to be
turned on or off
made mandatory or optional if turned on
Enable easy access to the digital content accessibility guidelines
The objective of this is to enable all the users such as administrators, reviewers, creators, contributors using sourcing solution to have easy access to the “Digital accessibility guidelines”.
Following is the capability to enable this:
System enables storing “Digital content accessibility guidelines” at system level in pdf format, in multiple languages. This is done through backend.
Contribution and Sourcing portals have a link to “Digital Content accessibility” page.
This is a static page that contains a brief description of content accessibility and overview of the guidelines.
It also has a list of languages in which content accessibility guidelines document is available.
User can select accessibility guidelines document in the language of his/her choice and download it.
Configurability;
This page is optional and can be configured at a system level by a specific Sunbird implementation. In case this is configured, the contribution and sourcing portals will have the link shown. Else there will be no link shown.
Enable storing of accessibility information of an asset
The objective of this to store the accessibility information of an asset so that it can be used for both discovery and reporting purpose. As of now, the approach is to get this information populated manually, by creator or publisher of an asset.
The information is whether the given asset supports accessibility features required for one or more special needs.
Asset creator providing the accessibility information
If accessibility is enabled for the tenant, the asset edit screen will show a button labeled “Accessibility Details”.
When the creator/contributor clicks the button, a popup related to accessibility information of the asset pops up.
The popup will have a reference to the digital content accessibility page.
The popup will have list of configured accessible features that an asset can have. The features are grouped by different types of accessibility needs. Both the different types of accessibility needs and the features for each need are configured.
User can select one or more features and declare that the asset supports the selected accessibility features and save.
Note: As of now all the accessibility information is optional
The accessibility information is stored in the asset and can be obtained by reading the asset.
The information is stored in such a way that
it is easy to search content accessible for a one or more given special needs and features.
it is easy to create report of % of accessible content for each special need and feature.
Configurability:
The following can be configured at system and tenant level:
Capture accessibility information - Yes or No. In case of yes, the button to show accessibility details is shown. If no, the button is not shown. If this is not configured at tenant level, system level configuration is taken. If there is no system config, the default value is No. Note: If this value is “Yes”, then content accessibility page is mandatory.
List of accessibility features, grouped by accessibility needs - This can be configured at tenant level. If a tenant doesn’t have the list, it is taken from system level config. If there is no list even at system level, the accessibility information popup shows a message “Could not find any accessibility details”.
Accessibility feature is Mandatory or Non-mandatory - The list of accessibility features that are mandatory. If this list is configured, user will not be allowed to submit asset for review unless the corresponding features are selected. If the list is empty, the user will be allowed to submit even if no option is selected. If this is not configured at tenant level, system level configuration is taken. If there is no syst.0em config, the default is empty list. Note, a tenant can make the mandatory list empty and override even if system level has a non-empty list. (This is not planned to be implemented for now. All accessibility information is optional).
Asset reviewer viewing/updating the accessibility information
When a reviewer opens an asset for review, in case accessibility information capture is enabled, the asset review screen will show a button labeled “Accessibility Details”.
When Reviewer clicks on the button, it shows the same popup as shown to the creator. The information populated by the creator is shown by default. It can be updated by the reviewer based on the configuration.
The published asset will have the final information stored and can be obtained by reading the asset.
Configurability:
The configurability is same as that for creation. In addition following can be configured at system and tenant level:
Enable modification of accessibility information by reviewer - Yes/No. If this is Yes, reviewer will be able to modify the accessible information (using same popup). Else the popup will be in read only mode. If there is no config at tenant level, system level config is used. In case system level config is not present, the default value is No.
Enable assets created using Sunbird editors support accessibility features
Enable navigation through keyboard short-cuts
All the content types with html as base like ECML,QuML, PDF contents need to be accessible compliant.
Ex:
ECML : In Case of ECML, All the HTML tags generated should be accessible compliant. Questions,Answers should be added with ARIA labels, roles. Images has to be considered for alt text content embedded onto the image attribute.
PDF : In Case of PDF, Any Resources generated by converting image to PDF has to get highlighted with error.
QuML : In Case of QuML, All the QuML responses generated should be accessible compliant. Questions,Answers should be added with ARIA labels, roles. Images has to be considered for alt text content embedded onto the image attribute.
Video : Video transcripts need to be available for users to make sense of the content.
Enable assets have auto-readability for image etc.
As per WCAG guidelines, The Readability of the images is of prime importance as any included images in the context should be readable by screeb readers.
Enable creators choose proper color, fonts
Contrast Ratio and font size validation has to be done while creation of assets and mark the content as explicitly “Non Accessible“ Content in case of creator intends to bypass these validation errors.
Should have steps for the creator of asset to self certify the content whether it is accessible compliant or not.
As a Platform, we might have to explicitly tag the content as Accessible Friendly Or not against each asset created on the platform.
Enable uploading transcript to videos
The objective of this capability is to enable accessibility of the videos to the users with hearing challenges. The video transcript will be used to show subtitles/captions when the video is played.
This is to enable providing transcripts to a video content that is created.
Note: Videos can also be uploaded as part of a solution to a Question or as part of an interactive content (created through content editor). But the scope of the current story is only to upload transcripts when an individual video content that is created through uploading a video. This can be further enhanced in future to take care of other workflows.
The following sections detail the flows for the current scope:
Create video content
The user with contributor/creator role starts creating a content that has video (mp4 or web) as one of the supported formats.
User uploads the video from local machine.
User has an option to upload transcript
User can choose a language and upload the transcript
User can upload transcripts for multiple languages
User can only upload one transcript for one language
The list of languages come from a preconfigured list of languages supported in the system
The transcript file extension can only be one of the allowed types, that are configured. Example .srt
There can be a configuration at system/tenant level if transcript file is mandatory or optional. It is optional by default (if there is no configuration).
User uploads one or more transcript files (one for each language).
User saves the content.
User has the following options in the editor, to manage transcript files:
Download a transcript file
Replace a transcript file uploaded earlier
Remove a transcript file
Add one ore more transcript files
User finally submits content for review
Review video content
The user with reviewer role opens a video content for review.
The review page provides an option to see the list of transcript files uploaded for each language (if any).
If there are no transcript file uploaded, no option to download the transcript files is shown.
If there are one or more transcript files uploaded, there is an option for the reviewer to download the transcript files.
The reviewer can download the transcript file and review it offline as required.
Rest of the review flow is as is.
Modify published video content
As part of modification flow of a video content, the creator will be able to download/delete/replace/add one or more transcript files as in the creation flow. The modifications are saved.