Research into Best Practices for Description of Science Content within Digital Talking Books

WGBH国家可理解媒体中心（NCAM）建议研究和记录有效的做法，以便在数字有声读物（DTB）中提供有意义的描述，为有视觉障碍或失明的中学后学生，专业人士和科学家提供服务。该项目将NCAM与美国盲人基金会（AFB）、盲人和诵读困难者录音公司联合起来。(RFB&D）和美国盲人印刷所（APH）合作开发基于研究的指导方针，以有效描述非文本科学内容。项目合作伙伴将探索和记录DTB中用于描述以科学为重点的图像，图表，图形，图表，插图，方程式和其他图形的当前实践。这项工作将建立在描述性方法的基础上，这些方法是为之前由NSF和美国教育部资助的项目中出现的在线科学内容开发的。有视觉障碍的科学家和专业人士将提供策略，例如他们要求助手和读者在描述图像时遵循的个人偏好。通过两阶段的德尔菲调查，有30个视力正常和视力受损的受访者，这些收集的做法将得到加强，完善和综合。然后，研究人员将使用这些实践为选定的科学图像创建代表性描述，并评估其对60名视障成年人的有效性。项目交付成果包括：一份研究报告，介绍了通过本研究定义的有效实践的综合，以及对视力障碍用户的这些实践的评估结果，以及为数字有声读物提供商提供的培训材料，这些材料总结了最佳实践，并提供了图像和样本描述，提供了实践机会。

The WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) proposes to research and document effective practices for providing meaningful descriptions within Digital Talking Books (DTBs) that serve post-secondary students, professionals and scientists who have visual impairments or blindness. The project unites NCAM with the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, Inc. (RFB&D) and the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) in a collaborative effort to develop research-based guidelines for effective descriptions of non-text science content.Project partners will explore and document current practices used within DTBs to describe science-focused images, charts, graphs, diagrams, illustrations, equations, and other graphics. The work will build on descriptive approaches developed for online science content that emerged from previous NSF- and U.S. Department of Education-funded projects. Scientists and professionals with visual impairments will contribute strategies, such as individual preferences that they ask assistants and readers to follow when describing images. Through a two-stage Delphi survey with 30 sighted and visually impaired respondents, these collected practices will be enhanced, refined and synthesized. Researchers will then use these practices to create representative descriptions for selected science images and evaluate their effectiveness with 60 visually impaired adults. Project deliverables include: A research report that presents a synthesis of effective practices as defined through this study and the results of evaluation of these practices with users with visual impairment and training materials for Digital Talking Book providers that summarize best practices and provide images and sample descriptions with opportunities for practice.