Podcasts and Accessibility in Education Part 1: Identifying the issue
Podcasts and accessibility is a tricky subject. Technically speaking there should be a text alternative provided to people, a discussion on the webaim list mentioned this issue about a month ago. I think that a little perspective is needed: is the podcast the primary source of the material? What is currently already done for students that are hard of hearing/deaf?
The podcast likely has no impact on current accommodations but it would have a positive impact on students with cognitive disabilities. With cognitive disabilities and different learning styles, the podcast could actually enhance the students experience and perhaps provide an accommodation that was needed.
Some questions and suggestions
First I think it is important to figure out what you are using the podcast for and why:
- Is the podcast replacing a source or just ‘value added’?
If you are just recording a lecture then the podcast is not the primary source of the information, it becomes aternate content. In this case you don’t need to have a transcript but making course notes available or even a formal transcript would be nice.
If you using the podcast as the primary source of the content then you should have a text alternative—like in the case of a lecture over distance education.
- Why if the lecture is recorded do you need to do so much more?
- Would that not deter profs from doing podcasts?
I don’t think the ideas or spirit of accessibility is to create a barrier to content. Making something accessible is about identifying and removing barriers were possible. As stated above, if you just recording a lecture that anyone can attend then the text falls under the ‘nice to have’ column. But if someone requests a text version, you should supply one.
If this deters profs from doing it then maybe a process needs to be identified so it is beneficial to connect the podcast with creating a text version.
- What if the lecture is already recorded to provide an accommodation for a student?
In this case we are so close to a podcast, lets just slap that in XML and get it out there already 
What steps could a prof go through to get a podcast + text online?
This leads into the next few parts of this series (that i hope to combine into one useful page when done). What I plan to look at over the next few weeks is using software to convert the audio to text and try to come up with a simple workflow for anyone to use.
Currently my thoughts are it will work like this:
- Lecture is recorded in recording device
- Recording is loaded onto a computer where it is translated to text
- Audio file (mp3) is loaded to the server along with the text alternative
- XML feed identifies the podcast and description of podcast points to text
I will look at Dragon Naturally Speaking, Human text translation, and anything else I can find. Keep posted