Research into Best Practices for Description of Science Content within Digital Talking Books (AFB End User Evaluation)

Principal Investigator:

Kay Alicyn Ferrell, Ph.D.
Associate Director, Policy Research
American Foundation for the Blind

WGBH, the public television station in Boston, Massachusetts, and its National Center on Accessible Media (NCAM), has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop best practices for description of science content within digital talking books. With assistance from experts across the country, NCAM has developed descriptions for a set of graphics that illustrates these best practices and which are now ready for evaluation by blind and visually impaired adults who are studying or already employed in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) is assisting NCAM in this effort by recruiting participants for the evaluation and conducting an analysis of the results.

Your participation in this evaluation would be appreciated. If you agree, you will first be asked for some demographic and background information about yourself when you provide your consent to the study below. Once we have recruited all of the participants, you will be sent a user id and password for a web site maintained by NCAM. At no time will WGBH or NCAM be able to access your personal information. The website you access will ask your opinion on the clarity and efficiency of 16 graphic images that have been described in text and auditory formats. You are asked to listen to the descriptions, answer the questions about clarity, efficiency, and your personal preferences, and make any other comments you wish about individual descriptions. Your evaluation is anticipated to take 1-1/2 to 2 hours to complete.

Some of you may also receive tactile representations of selected graphics prior to completing the evaluation. Responses to these items will help us determine if the descriptions are enhanced by tactile information. We will need your name and address in order to send you the tactile representations.

Once you have completed the evaluation using your user id number, we will pair those responses with your demographic information in an Excel file, and will send you a $75 Visa gift card. Once you have received the gift card, you name, address, and e-mail address will be deleted. Your responses to the evaluation will then only be identified by your user id number. You may, however, give explicit directions to retain your e-mail address if you would like to receive the evaluation results.

We foresee no risks to you in completing the evaluation. You are not likely to personally benefit from your participation, but you will provide valuable information to NCAM that will inform producers of digital talking books in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, and perhaps assist you in the future as you read these books.

Your participation is voluntary. You may decide to stop and withdraw from the evaluation at any time. If you do not wish to complete the evaluation, you may stop at any time. By leaving the web page, none of your answers will be recorded. If we do not receive evaluation responses identified by the user id assigned to you, we will delete any other information you have submitted online.

Begin the survey

AFB appreciates your interest in this study and your willingness to help us obtain participants. At the moment, we have all the participants we need. You are welcome to fill out the survey if you would like to know the study results, but we are not asking you to participate in the end user evaluation at this time. Please contact kferrell@afb.net if you have any questions. Thank you for your assistance.

This effort is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number #HRD-0435663. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.