So this has been a trip.   I was all excited to try out another app from my newly minted Adobe Creative Cloud account.  I chose to create a short training video that would kill two birds with one stone.   Our assignment was to create a 4 to 6 minute screencast that demonstrated doing some task in a piece of software.  It had to have some music, an introduction and sign off segments, step by step instructions and a diagram.  The topic for me was how to enter assign a task while entering a safety assessment in Metricsoft, which is the safety tracking software AAM uses.   A piece of cake I thought!  First challenge was I did the initial screencast recording in Articulate, and exported an MPEG4 file.  Turns out that apparently Premier doesn’t speak that codec so I downloaded and signed up for a year subscription to Screencast-O-Matic.com which allowed me to rerecord and export as an AVI.  I then imported that into Premier Pro CC and did the needed editing.  I added music, some titling, and some stills.   All told it took me about eight hours of watching how tos, editting, and rendering.  The only thing I couldn’t figure out how to do was speed up the playback a bit without making myself sound like donald duck.  So the video does sound a little slow.  But that’s my natural speaking…… but then again, that’s why I usually script my  recording and practice..  One cool learning was how to edit audio tracks in Audition via Premier.

Here are a couple of resources on Metricsoft that I found:

Metricosoft Site

Health & Safety

Sometimes I tell my grand-kids (we have 23!) that I was built out of spare parts.  I have dealt with that feeling most of my life.  For example,  I have been deaf in my right ear since I was eight years old, the results of a mastoidectomy.  A subsequent operation on that same inner ear years later resulted in partial paralysis of the right portion of my mouth.  And of course there’s the double-vision.  We’re not talking cross eyed here.  We are talking about some defect in the way my mind knits the two images from my mind together.  Two images that stay side by side, and never skew in relationship to each other as when you purposefully cross your eyes and tilt your head from side to side.  In fact, for me, that action actually results in two sets of two.  Two that stay together on each side, that move in tandem with each other.  Fun right!

Well, here are some of the effects that these blessings have brought into my life.

• I always gravitate to people’s right side as we walk and talk…. unless of course I really don’t want to listen to what they are saying.
• When facing others while in conversation, they often comment that I am a good listener, making them feel like I value what they are saying.  Of course I don’t mention that I often have to pay close attention to their lips and facial expressions to get the bulk of what they say.
• You will most likely find me in the first or second row of any class or meeting I attend, to hear and to see the board more clearly.
• And of course my favorite, when I am up in front of a group, and I often am as a trainer, I have to visual find the person who has just commented or answered a question.  This is because I cannot tell the direction of sound with only one hearing ear.  So, when I train, first thing I tell my students is….. raise your hand when you speak!  By the way, my co-workers have had some fun times with me out on the shop floor!  All that noise bouncing off of the walls, and me twirling around trying to locate that person that called out what I thought was my name!

Why to I share?  Because I can relate to those who have a need for accessible content in all areas of life.  And the possibility of my being stone deaf in the next few years looms as a distinct possibility as my remaining hearing ear declines, as the yearly charts are telling me.

As I’ve read through the designing for accessibility materials I have noticed a few points that seem to be most important.

1. Make sure that all content, both text and visuals are tagged appropriately by your software to allow screen readers to interpret correctly.  Sure, inserting Alternate Text seems to be a headache, but it helps someone somewhere hear what you have to say.   I actually downloaded one of those apps suggested by the W3C group and tried it on my Word document before running the Accessibility checker.  And I can say that it gave me enough grief to want to give up.
2. Get rid of all those stray spaces!  Screen readers can get confused with spaces that shouldn’t be there, and quit functioning correctly.  This puts the sight impaired at a distinct disadvantage.
3. Use captioning, and or text transcriptions of narrations for video.  When I think of all of the effort that I have put into narrated videos, and not incorporating the narrations that I so carefully typed, it makes me sad that I may have denied someone of learning what I was trying to teach.
4. Pay attention to color!  I am guilty of using color for communications, denoting the difference between certain words with only color differences.  And now I know that intent may have been lost on some of my audience that happened to have trouble differentiating between those colors.  So using bold text, and different sizes and fonts makes sense.  And of course italicizing can help.
5. Put away that mouse!  Remember that blind people can’t see where that curser is, and waving the mouse around until accidentally hovering over a hotspot is not anyone’s idea of a fun time.  So stow the mouse and test your document or site using keyboard functions.

These are just some of the ways that we who design educational materials can make sure that all of our audiences can get the point.   There are a ton more available.

If you would like to learn more, here are a few sources that you might try:

Developer Circles LAGOS is a Group of Facebook developers that share best practices.  They have a great Accessibility page that gives solid information as well as wonderful links to resources and tools for the developers.

Developer Circles LAGOS

Usability.gov is a comprehensive website with a ton of links to everything that a developer would want to know and use to make the product of his or her efforts of use to the impaired segment.  And of course it’s a great start when wanting to remember how to access Section 508 or the WebAim content.

Accessibility.Gov

The University of Washington has an extensive accessibility web page, with great links.  The page focuses mainly on web development, trying to ensure that the work that is done within their system considers accessibility.

University of Washington Accessibility Page

View at Medium.com

How does one end a career you might ask?  Most people do it by stopping what they are doing.  That is to say, they retire.  Well, that’s not for me.  When faced with the prospect of retirement I choose to transition….. more about that later.

Hello, I am Tony Webster and I am an eclectic.  What is an eclectic?  Someone who can’t be content doing or being just one thing.  So, I’ve been and tried a wide variety of activities in my sixty four and a half years.  Having started out in life as the son of an artist / secretary, my goal in life was to be an art educator.  That is, an art teacher.  Half way through college to achieve that aim, I paused to serve a mission for the LDS church and upon returning married.  Newly married, and working as, of all things, a bookkeeper, I next apprenticed as a Tool & Die Maker.  That course consumed the next twenty years of my life with growing expertise and experience resulting in Master Tool Maker status.  A great way to support the family of six kids, but leaving a simmering need for expression and expansion.

In my late forties I went back to college, eventually graduating with a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration.  My program was Business Management.  This achievement was the bridge for a transition from shop floor operation to management.  The next decade saw a progression of changing positions.  From department manager, to shift supervisor, eventually to production systems manger.  All through this time my creative side called out and small training content projects satisfied that craving.  I would see a need, develop content, then deliver to targeted groups of workers. Subjects included Quality, Continuous Improvement, and eventually, Leadership Development.

This combination of work experience and training experience has led to many opportunities in the last few years.  Fourteen years ago I changed employer and was afforded the opportunity to be trained and certified as a Master Six Sigma Black Belt, a Certified Trainer for the John Maxwell Team, and as a Certified Trainer for Vital Smarts teaching Crucial Conversations and Crucial Accountability seminars.  These opportunities have strengthened my interest in developing and delivering educational content.

But, alas, times do change.  Through a very recent buyout, my current employer has become one small piece of a very very big picture.  Having 90 facilities world wide, wide a fully functional middle and upper executive group in place, and extensive downsizing and restructuring occurring as you read this blog, I have ended up with three functions.  My current official title is: Lead Industrial Engineer / Continuous Improvement.  Along with those designations, my current functions also include, the EHS (Environmental Health and Safety) Manager, as well as training coordinator.

Which brings me to the purpose and subject of this blog….  Why am I pursuing a Masters in Educational Technologies?  Because through this long journey I have falling in love with training.  I love all aspects of it.  The research and preparation.  The content development and design.  And, of course, the delivery.    So what do I want to do when I retire?  I don’t….. I want to build upon what I hope I have gotten good at doing, and consult and do contract work doing what I love to do.

Subsequent posts on this blog will probably include some topics dictated by this course that I am current involved in.  But hopefully it will give you access to some of my thoughts and feelings along the way.  We’ll see won’t we?

Till next time.  Have a great day!