Six cross-disciplinary Hopkins teams were awarded 2020 DELTA grants. Recipients receive up to $75,000 from the Provost’s Office to develop new digital initiatives to enhance teaching and learning. An AAM team was awarded a 2020 DELTA Grant for Broadening the Message: Making Videos More Usable at Johns Hopkins University and Beyond. Principal Investigators: Jeff Day and Bonnielin Swenor, both of the School of Medicine; Donna Schnupp, of the School of Education; and Valerie Hartman, of the Peabody Institute.
“One of our main study questions is testing audio descriptions in [instructional] videos,” says Day, a physician in the School of Medicine’s Department of Art as Applied to Medicine and a principal investigator on the project.
Although most federal guidelines on electronic media for disabilities are very clear, Day says, those for audio description in video creation are written in a way that can be misinterpreted. The goal of his study is to take videos to users with both low and normal vision to gain greater insight into the amount of audio description that is most usable and useful, thereby providing better educational media experiences to low vision users.
“We’re looking for insights that clarify what is most helpful,” he says. “We’re hoping our work will inform the rulemakers and creators to see that the entire audience is best served,” he says.”