Videos

Two videos I made with people with learning disabilities for the Scripting Enabled event in London are now up on YouTube.

You Tube and Easy YouTube Player

This film shows someone with a learning disability, Lizzie, using YouTube and then the Easy YouTube player.  It highlights some of the issues around players online and shows how Easy YouTube is so much better for her.

You can access Lizzie using YouTube and the Easy YouTube player with the Easy YouTube player

You can access Lizzie using YouTube and the Easy YouTube player on YouTube

Short interviews

This film shows short interviews with two people with learning disabilities, Ann and Lizzie, talking about some of the issues they face being online generally.

You can access Ann and Lizzie being interviewed with the Easy YouTube player

You can access Ann and Lizzie being interviewed on YouTube

* I am very grateful to Ann and Lizzie and that they have given permission for these films to be shared.

Context

Both videos were shown as  part of a presentation called Online Content for People with Learning Disabilities: opening doors.

Here is the original presentation:

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Easy YouTube Player V2

Christian Heilmann has released the Easy YouTube Player V2. This is an enhanced version of the original one Christian developed.

Use this screen shot to go to the player:

Possible Benefits

There are many reasons why this player could make it easier for people with learning disabilties to watch YouTube videos. Here are some:

• The buttons are big.
• The colours act as clues or prompts to their functionality. Red is stop, green is go and so on.
• The bar at the top to put the URL in is big. This has obvious benefits and also for people who have secondary impairments such as visual impairment or mobility issues.
• The instructive text helps people to know what each of the options does.
• People can search YouTube for topics which will appear in the playlist – this helps to answer my query as to how many people would know how to copy and paste a URL into the box at the top.
• People have three options as to the size of the video they watch. In my experience, this has been a big issue (and this is one of the things I personally find the most exciting). Video without a resize option can often be missed or meaningless and this really gives users control.
• It’s easy to control the volume and there is an indicator to visually represent its state.

User Testing

I will be doing extensive user testing on this player next week and the following week, with a range of people with learning disabilities. So the above are mostly my thoughts and those who have tested it to date.

Some things I will be testing:

• Does it work? Is it clear and is it easier?
• I am not sure if the wording I have provided is right.
• It might be too big.
• I am not sure if there are relativity issues in terms of the design- ie we may need to tweak the relative sizes of all the options if this is overwhelming for people. This is a possibility.
• We may need to tweak the design elements themselves.
• I am not sure if we have got the colours right.
• Will people use the other options available to them, such as the playlists and del.icio.us This will be interesting and the whole area of playlists and favourites is one I would like to look into more, eventually.
• Would we need to explain copying and pasting URLs in the first place. So far I have had to do this, so I may need to think of a fix.

Of course, there are lots of people with learning disabilities (or otherwise indeed) who use websites with support from a support worker/ carer/ friend etc. Hopefully, this will make it easier for everyone, not just people with learning disabilities themselves. And it should give people more control, more easily, over what they watch and how they watch it.

Player help documentation

Christian has also provided player help documentation which is even more of a bonus in my view.

More

Please feed back your thoughts on Christian’s blog or here. It would be good to get this as right as we can.

And then maybe YouTube can add it as a viewing option. :-)