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This is Rikki Poynter

Posted by & filed under Media.

 

Photo of Rikki Poynter

via Instagram: @rikkipoynter https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd51PE2HBlN/

 

…and she is awesome. Rikki is a young deaf woman who makes vlogs on her life and opinions on YouTube.

She has appeared on several national news organizations and talks about her deaf experiences, accessibility, and mental health.

One of her biggest areas of advocacy is for the captioning of videos uploaded to YouTube, which is one of the largest video-sharing platforms in the world. According to her channel description, she wants to take over YouTube, and then maybe the Internet. You can check out her awesome videos here: Rikki Poynter’s YouTube Channel, and check out her post on automatic captioning after the break. Read more

Accessible Fonts in Documents

Posted by & filed under Digitization, Media, Services & Resources, Tools and Toys.

As part of the series on accessibility, it is a good idea to look at transferable information– in this case fonts. Now, regardless of what Microsoft Suite application, PDF editing software, or website builder the number of fonts one has available is staggering. However, not all should be used, if the goal is accessibility to audience members with assistive technology. Under Title II of the ADA and 508 Compliance guidelines there are fonts that should be used, Sans Serif, and those you should avoid or use sparingly, Serif and Decorative. 

Sans Serif fonts are those that are don’t have those extra strokes at the end of letters. These are easier for screen readers to distinguish each letter. 

Example of Sans Serif font.

Sans Serif Font Example.

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Adapting to Smart Technology with Abdulrahman Habib

Posted by & filed under Project Profiles.

 

Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with UNT College of Information Ph.D. student Abdulrahman Habib. In his latest project, he seeks to determine how Denton residents perceive different aspects of smart technologies. In our talk, he also provided a wealth of examples of smart technologies and offered many reasons for their usefulness in different sectors of our lives. By sharing Abulrahman’s knowledge and research projects, I hope to expand our understanding of how our lives are being influenced by smart technologies and how we might experience smart communities in the future.

Abdulrahman Habib

Abdulrahman Habib

Before we get started, I wanted to share some cursory information about smart city initiatives to prime you for Habib’s examples. Essentially, smart city projects aim to increase efficiency in many areas of municipal functioning. These projects utilize sensors to collect data and facilitate reactions to situations. For example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security installed low-cost sensors around flood-prone areas in Texas to enable responders to send out more accurate warnings and allow for faster evacuation and rescue. Additionally, the United State Postal Service fleet of vehicles was equipped with accelerometers in a government project to measure vibrations while crossing bridges. By adding sensors to an already existing service, engineers can benefit from new avenues for data collection to more efficiently assess bridges for safety. Smart city projects use accessible data to promote faster and more accurate adaptation to new events. With this statement in mind, let’s dive into the first part of my conversation with Abdulrahman Habib. Read more

Technology in Psychology and Counseling

Posted by & filed under Services & Resources.

Example data from SPSS

This example data shows the layout of my savior software.

 

In my academic life, digital resources have significantly aided me in multiple ways. During my psychology bachelor’s degree, I built a research study using MediaLab software. The digital platform streamlined the entire process from creation to distribution. I also utilized Sona Systems tools to simplify the recruitment process. Participants could easily sign up for time slots, and I would know how many people to expect at each slot. Lastly, I always have access to the latest research through online databases, which include countless articles, books, and dissertations. Digital resources opened up immense possibilities to do more research and gain new knowledge in a relatively shorter amount of time. There’s no way of knowing the vast amount of hours I’ve been able to save by using SPSS software to complete the statistical analysis portion of all my research endeavors. All I can say is that I’m glad I don’t have to make those computations by hand. Read more

Old and New: Preserving Heritage in New Ways with Technology

Posted by & filed under Digitization.

 

 

Split image of the Buddha site. One side as it is today. The other with a 3D recreation of the destroyed statue.

The site of a Buddha statue as it is today (left). The same site with a 3D model of the Buddha (right).

 

There is an old saying, “necessity is the mother of invention.” It is no less true in the field of digital preservation, digital humanities, and history. The great thing for me about history and library information science is how they inform each other, but also how they provide pathways to other areas of study. We have all watched in horror was cultural sites and materials have been destroyed by man, natural disaster, or the slow decay of time. Today though we have the technology, innovation, and cross disciplinary technique to try to preserve some aspects of these sites and materials separate from the actual object or physical location—digital preservation with 3-D scanning. Read more

Digital Preservation: Video Games

Posted by & filed under Digitization, Video Games.

Video games face some major issues in archiving, specifically around access. In honor of International Digital Preservation Day, I wanted to talk about the difficulties surrounding video game archiving, as well as highlight some interesting video game archives. This is by no means a detailed exploration of archive issues within the video game community, nor do I seek to answer those problems; I am nowhere near qualified enough to propose solutions, however, I do find the major problems I will discuss generally recognizable and easy to understand.

What’s so hard about archiving video games?

Video games face a unique problem to other archive formats: accessibility. Yes, accessibility is always something to consider when creating any archive, but it plays a different role for games. An archive of pictures or videos might be accessed online through a website or web service. Videos can be hosted on YouTube or other video hosting sites. Images have plenty of hosting services, like Imgur. More academic services, like Omeka, provide detailed metadata inclusion. Fundamentally, access to pictures, videos, and even text, is fairly straightforward and well supported: find a hosting site, upload your content, relax as the world sees the fruits of your labor hosted on a fairly standardized platform. This is a simplified idea of archiving that excludes questions about accurate and inclusive metadata, broadcasting accessibility to communities, etc., but it serves as a juxtaposition to the accessibility issues video games face. Read more

International Digital Preservation Day

Posted by & filed under Digitization, Events.

logo for international digital preservation day

Today the University of North Texas Libraries are joining the celebration of International Digital Preservation Day.

In addition to the series of events in the Library, we’ll feature a series of posts today about the impact of digital preservation on areas of interest to the DH@UNT team.

Digital preservation touches everyone, not just libraries and the academy. To learn more about what’s at stake in digital preservation, visit the Digital Preservation Coalition. You can also follow #IDPD17 on social media.

Creating and Maintaining Accessibility: PDFs (Part 2)

Posted by & filed under Digitization, Services & Resources, Tools and Toys.

      This is the second half of the blog posts on Accessible PDFs. Part one covered why we should strive to make PDFs accessible, where to purchase Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, and how to make Accessible PDFs. This post continues with that creation process, but looks at Forms and interactive PDFs. It also discusses the Repair Workflow feature, and Accessibility Checker, and hits a few more characteristics to keep in mind when creating accessible PDFs. Let’s jump right back into it. 

Forms and Interactivity

          The last post ended with a discussion about Document Tags and proper reading order. These are especially important if you are creating a form, and/or wish for the document to allow interaction. Meaning that people who access the form or document can fill out parts.
  1. Labeled form fields with accessible messages and no timing; to be accessible form fields must allow a value to be input into them; this means the form field is interactive. There should also be a defined logical tab order to allow for easy navigation. The simplest way to do forms is to leverage the application. Under Tools is a button that says Prepare Form. This is a wizard that will help you create an interactive and accessible form. It will even work with existing documents from PDF, Word, or Excel. You need to verify that the wizard correctly detected any existing data as fields with the proper labeling. 
  2. Hyperlinks and Navigational Aids; navigational aids includes links, bookmarks, headings, table of contents, and preset tab orders. Bookmarks are useful and should be added; it’s super easy and handy to create these from the document headings. 
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Net Neutrality: the FCC, the Internet, and You

Posted by & filed under Debates, Media, Services & Resources.

The future of net neutrality was put in question just before Thanksgiving, with the unveiling of the FCC’s plan to repeal the Obama Administration’s regulations preventing internet service providers (ISPs) from throttling content or charging premium rates to access content.
 
Net neutrality is the principle that regardless of user, content, website, platform, application, equipment, or method all internet providers must treat all internet data the same. This means that providers cannot legally throttle (slow down), or charge additional monies for particular websites and/or web content.
 
There are major supporters of net neutrality among them Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo, and many others. Even civil rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, Battle for the Internet, and Fight for the Future also side with net neutrality.
 
This video from John Oliver provides an overview of the stakes of net neutrality for consumers:

 


 
(Contains strong language.)
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