A YouTube caption fail

I’ve been spending some time on YouTube recently, as we’re hosting a number of videos on the platform for a campaign we’re running to recruit foster carers.

Obviously we wanted to make sure we added captions to the videos, and to save a bit of time I’ve been trying out the caption tools. Firstly I noticed that YouTube automatically ‘machine transcribed’ some of the videos. On inspection, though, the accuracy of these was way off – possibly made worse by the particular accents which the speakers had, to which I doubt YouTube’s voice recognition is very well tuned.

YouTube's auto-captioning is way off here

However, the transcript tool fared much better. This lets you upload a plain text file with the transcript of the video. This is far easier than creating captions, which require timecodes.

YouTube then processes the file in a matter of seconds and applies the text as captions to the video, making a best guess at the timing. With the 7 videos I had uploaded, the results were very good, with split second accuracy in many cases.

A bit of user input makes all the difference

One thing that did sometimes throw the timing a bit was where I had skipped some of the dialogue or shortened it for brevity and ease of reading. Overall, though, it was certainly satisfactory and a massive time saver.

In conclusion, then, I certainly wouldn’t rely on the auto-captioning, but it’s fantastic that YouTube are offering this given that the majority of uploaders will never bother manually adding captions. The transcription tool is an excellent compromise delivering better than average results, as it certainly worthy of praise.

The petition, which gathered over 6000 signatures, referred to moves by French and German governments to encourage their citizens to move away from the antiquated browser, amidst fears of security vulnerabilities.

It also described a vicious cycle whereby government departments continue to tolerate IE6 because most sites still work on it, whilst many companies continue to design for the browser because most government departments use it.

It concluded by calling for that cycle to be broken, and asking that innovation and security be given their proper place.

The IE6 No More campaign gathers pace

“A very large operation…”

But the response to the petition, released today, may be seen by some as a little dismissive:

Complex software will always have vulnerabilities and motivated adversaries will always work to discover and take advantage of them.

It refers to policies of “regular software patching and updating” to “help defend against the latest threats”, and states that:

It is for individual departments to make the decision on how best to manage the risk based on this clear guidance.

Finally, it concludes:

It is not straightforward for HMG departments to upgrade IE versions on their systems. Upgrading these systems to IE8 can be a very large operation [...] It is therefore more cost effective in many cases to continue to use IE6 and rely on other measures, such as firewalls and malware scanning software, to further protect public sector internet users.

This will be a disappointing response for many, not least those of us who remain at the mercy of the nine year old browser. Naturally, we were under no illusion that a more sympathetic response would somehow have signalled an immediate end to IE6. Indeed, most of us appreciate that, due to the hundreds of legacy systems still in existence and built with IE6 in mind, the browser is likely to be around for some time yet. Nevertheless, the official seal of approval from central Government to the principles of the petition would have been a major step forward.

Growing pressure

Whilst the point about legacy systems is a valid one, the counter-argument is that many of us have a new set of critical systems that we are increasingly using to do our jobs, many of which have actively withdrawn support for IE6. I’m talking about the likes of YouTube and Google Apps – crucial tools for many of us working in digital communications.

Another recent example saw our local bus company updating their website. Due to a number of serious problems with its design, IE6 users (among others) found themselves unable to access the site. Again, this was a vital tool for some staff and many had to arrange for alternative browsers (such as FireFox) to be installed as a workaround.

And whilst installing an alternative browser would seem like the obvious solution, the locked-down nature of most work terminals means that this process is rarely simple, and often comes at a price.

See more reactions to the response from Dan Frydman, who launched the petition.

Receiving the award!

Those who read my previous post will have seen that we were up for a Good Communications Award for our campaign to increase voter turn-out at the 2009 Scottish Youth Parliament elections. The Government to Citizen award recognises ‘a specific campaign which has successfully connected with its target audience at a local or national level’.

Following a lively awards ceremony at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, I’m delighted to report that we were successful, with the judges commenting on:

“excellent planning and execution, segmenting comms to reach the right audience in the right way. Great results on an astonishingly small budget”

I’m delighted to have been involved in such a successful campaign, and look forward to building on the success with, hopefully, even more innovation during next year’s elections.

The awards ceremony

The full winners list

• Local Authority Of The Year Winner: Westminster City Council
• Local Government Communicator Of The Year Winner: Amanda Aviss, West Sussex County Council
• Strategic Communications Campaign Winner: City Of Bradford Metropolitan District Council – b someone Education Campaign
• Council Publication Of The Year Winner: Westminster City Council – Westminster Reporter
• Council Publication Journalism Winner: East Riding Of Yorkshire Council – East Riding News
• Council Publication Design Winner: West Sussex County Council – Taste West Sussex
• Print Innovation Award Winner: Harrow Council – Have You Heard? Council Tax Booklet
• Local Authority Pr Team Of The Year Winner: West Sussex County Council
• Internal Communications Award Winner: Ministry Of Justice – Insight Staff Magazine
• Government To Citizen Communication Award Winner: City Of Edinburgh Council – Scottish Youth Parliament Campaign
• Mixed Media Campaign Award Winner: Lambeth Council – Your Borough, Your Budget, Your Choice Campaign
• Mobile Technology Award Winner: Aylesbury Vale District Council – Information By SMS
• Contact Centre Technology Award Winner: London Borough Of Hillingdon
• Contact Centre Training Award Winner: Kent County Council
• Contact Centre Of The Year Award Winner: London Borough Of Richmond-Upon-Thames
• Telecoms Innovation Award Winner: Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council
• It Partnership Award Winner: Hertfordshire County Council/connect Digitally – Online School Admissions
• Website Accessibility Award Winner: London Borough Of Hillingdon
• Local Authority Website Of The Year Winner: Salford City Council
• IT Project Innovation Award Winner: North Yorkshire County Council For NYnet Broadband

For more info about the winning entries, see www.communicator.gcawards.co.uk/awards

Campaign graphic

Later this week I’ll be attending a national awards ceremony, at which one of our campaigns has been nominated for an award. ** UPDATE – we won! **

Edinburgh’s 2009 Scottish Youth Parliament election campaign has already won a Bronze award in the Marketing Society’s Star Awards – the only local authority campaign to win in any category. It was also a finalist in the CIPR national awards, in the category of best campaign under £10k.

It has now been shortlisted for the “Government to Citizen Communications” category of the Good Communication Awards, and I’ll be representing my organisation at the ceremony on Thursday.

The tremendous reception that the campaign has received is thanks to the enthusiasm, innovation and hard work not only of my colleagues, but also of the young people involved in the elections, and I’m proud to represent such a campaign as just one of the many people who worked to make it happen.

The following gives a flavour of the efforts, and hopefully offers some inspiration to others, especially those involved in e-participation and youth engagement.

Scottish Youth Parliament Elections in Edinburgh

The challenge

Every two years, the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) holds elections for young people between 14 and 25 to represent the views of their peers. In Edinburgh there are 11 SYP members. In 2007, 13 candidates stood for election, just 25 votes were cast and elections were held in a single venue on one day.

For the 2009 elections there was clearly room for improvement, and an integrated campaign was launched, utilising traditional, social and web-based marketing, to try to increase awareness of the elections and boost the number of candidates and voters.

The solution

To encourage more young people to stand for election, the following was carried out:

• A dedicated page was created on the Young Edinburgh website
• Posters were distributed featuring the celebrity endorsement of local lad John Loughton, former chair of the SYP and well known to the target audience as the winner of Celebrity Big Brother Hi-jack 2008
• Briefings went to all schools asking head teachers to use in-school communication channels
• Information was posted the Council webpage and an announcement made to the local press

We received around 25 notes of interest and eventually 18 candidates stood.

One of the election posters

Next, to get more people voting, we introduced social media, setting up Facebook and Bebo pages as well as a YouTube channel.

Bebo webpage

The Facebook and Bebo pages were used for posting candidate photos, written and video manifestos, allowing people to become fans and to share with online friends.

On YouTube, we uploaded videos of the candidates outlining their manifestos, again with links back to the information pages.

A video manifesto

We also:

• Made it easier for people to vote by extending voting from a day to a week and placing ballot boxes in schools, libraries and colleges
• Updated the Young Edinburgh webpage with information on voting, with links to the social media sites
• Distributed posters with details of the SYP social media sites and how and where to vote
• Ran a radio campaign
• Placed adverts on Facebook
• Secured a feature piece in the local press and in the council’s newspaper, which goes to every household in the city

The outcome

The results were outstanding:

• 18 people stood for election
• 5019 young people voted – an increase of 19,984% from 2007!
• All 11 seats were filled – three candidates in two areas were elected unopposed
• In total, there were 2727 views of candidate videos on YouTube. The video with most number individual views amounted to 404, the lowest 107

Conclusion

Probably the most telling aspect of the campaign was how social media was used to compliment the other, more traditional, channels. Social media is rarely a solution in itself, but it is a significant addition to your arsenal and can dramatically increase your reach. The video manifestos were hugely popular, generating a lot of interest in the elections and in the democratic process.

The campaign was also testimony to the continuing trend towards utilising social networking to engage with young people. Only a few years ago, most local authorities would have discarded such an approach as too risky, too unmanageable, and too unknown. Now, there is a growing interest and understanding of the benefits of these platforms, along with a more rational and considered appreciation of the risks. Good experiences such as this one will continue to build the case for the wider adoption of such channels as a key method of engaging and informing our citizens.

I look forward to seeing how many voters turn out in 2011…

There’s no agenda as yet – in the tradition of GovCamps, we’ll be setting that on the day, but there will no doubt be a strong Web 2.0 and social media theme.

The Informatics Forum in Edinburgh will provide an inspiring space for discussion and engagement, the sharing of experiences and creation of new ideas.

You can find out more, and book your free place for the event, at http://scotgovcamp.eventbrite.com

Also read this preview of the event by Improvement Service reporter David Friel.

Thanks to Lesley Thomson, from the Scottish Government, for getting the ball rolling.

EDIT – the event now has an official site at http://scotgovcamp.wordpress.com

As you may or may not know, the British Standards Institute have now published the 2nd draft of the BS8878 British Code of Practice on Web Accessibility.

Briefly, the standard is designed to be an end-to-end guide to helping web product (website, mobile site, IPTV site) owners ensure their products condier the needs of disabled and elderly people at all stage of the web production process, from initial requirements gathering, through selection of technologies and platforms, testing, launch and maintenance.

It’s a standard for web producers, project and product managers, who need to understand the process of how to create accessible web products, rather than how to create the technology, design and editorial of web products (which WCAG already does very well).

It will supercede the previous PAS-78 guidelines, updating them to include guidance on such topics as:

• The Equality Act 2010
• The relationship between inclusive design and user-personalised approaches to accessibility, including whether to provide additional accessibility provisions
• Creating accessible web products for computer, mobile and IPTV platforms
• How to procure accessible web products
• How to assure a product’s accessibility throughout the production process, including the value and costs of different forms of accessibility testing
• Dealing with feedback and complaints on accessibility from users

The standard is a guide to the use of the different accessibility guidelines out there (bringing together references to the work of WAI-WCAG and WAI-AGE, as well as others), rather than replacing or replicating those existing guidelines.

This Draft for Public Consultation is a chance for people to tell us whether our drafting committee have got the content and style of the standard right and both given them an idea of the breadth of the parts of their production process that accessibility issues impact, and also demystified accessibility so they feel confident they know how to proceed.

DPC BS 8878 can be viewed at www.bsigroup.com/drafts until 30 June 2010.

Jonathan Hassell

I certainly aim to pop along and comment, and I’d urge others to as well.

Twitter Election Map

Over the past year or two there has been a palpable surge of interest in using Web 2.0 in the public sector, and in most cases that’s a very positive thing. The added value that such platforms can bring to the services we deliver is obvious, opening new channels of outreach and improving engagement and involvement.

During last night’s election count, the City of Edinburgh Council were putting Web 2.0 to marvellous use by keeping citizens bang up to date with progress of the count taking place over at Meadowbank Stadium.

The following is a summary of what the council did on the night.

Disclaimer: I had no direct involvement in this – on the night I followed these channels as a local resident and any comments are my own personal views.

Twitter map

Perhaps the most visually impressive part of the coverage was the Twitter map, a Google Maps mash-up which displayed the latest geo-tagged tweet for each of the 5 constituencies. A relatively simple effect, but one which gave a very relevant, localised slant to the proceedings.

Edinburgh's Election Twitter Map

Twitter updates

Powering this was, of course, the Council’s own Twitter account (@Edinburgh_CC) which was used throughout the evening to tweet both localised, geo-tagged updates, as well as more general information and links to the blog referred to below.

For me, the people behind this did two things particularly well when using Twitter. Firstly, they managed expectations by posting the following statement on the website:

We’re sorry that we can’t enter into any real-time discussions about what we’re doing, but we will be keeping an eye on the feedback on Twitter to see what people think and what we can learn from the experience.

City of Edinburgh Council Elections page

This was a really important, preemptive move which meant that hopefully not too many people were trying to start a conversation with the team and ending up being disappointed.

However, early on in the evening they did respond to one tweet, relating to the use of geo-tags, so I thought I’d send them a quick question too:

@Edinburgh_CC Is it just the two counts?

@prettysimple

To which, sure enough, they replied:

@prettysimple two counts; five constituencies – blog post on the count process coming soon

@Edinburgh_CC

This is a great demonstration of the power of Web 2.0 – the immediacy of response married with high availability and reach make Twitter and its ilk potentially ideal platforms for speaking to your customers and citizens, and can deliver a positive experience not only to the individual concerned, but also to anyone else who happens to be watching (I intentionally asked a question that I thought others may be wondering too).

Blog

The Council’s emergency and news blog was used to great effect to post updates throughout the evening, not just on the results, but also on the process itself, including:

• A nice collection of stats, including the number of registered voters, polling places and postal votes. These were posted at a time when the updates had ran a little dry, thus keeping the interest of those following the progress
• A step by step guide to the count process, giving details of how each stage works, from the first and second count and the adjudication of doubtful papers, through to the final declaration
• A useful who’s who, listing the roles of the key players on the night
• A statement on the timing of the results from the Returning Officer

Flickr

An official snap from the count (copyright City of Edinburgh Council)

Finally, a handful of images were also uploaded to the Council’s Flickr photostream, providing citizens with a glimpse of the controlled chaos.

This added a wonderfully human touch to the process, and I’d have liked to have seen more photos (in the end there were only about 20). But it again shows great potential. One of the more appealing elements of count night is the very British scene of people pitching in and working together, often against the odds, and this kind of coverage does a great job of capturing that.

All in all, a triumph for Web 2.0 advocates and hopefully a continuation of what we’re seeing across the UK – a long-lasting, relevant and fruitful use of social media tools to engage and involve citizens and position them at the heart of everything we’re doing.

I recently bought a new phone. It’s great, but like most smartphones it’s taking a bit of time to get completely used to the complex interface.

On the second day of playing with it, I was browsing the web and came across a site which had Captcha. It was a Google product, and I had to complete the Captcha field to continue with what I wanted to do. The problem was, the image that it had come up with was terribly distorted, and I couldn’t make out the letters and numbers. I tried several possibilities, failing every time. Normally I would simply refresh the page to get a new image, but I hadn’t yet learned how to do that on my phone! I tried going back then forwards again, but it just loaded the same image. And crucially, there was no link to an accessible alternative.

It was one of those rare occasions where I had hit an absolute brick wall because of an inaccessible web design feature.

What did I do? Well, I could have fired up my laptop and done it on that. I could have closed the browser and logged back on, or tried again later. I did none of those things – the moment was lost, as was my interest in completing the task. But what if it had been something really important?

The experience reminded me of a few conversations I have had recently about web accessibility, and all of these had a similar theme – the unnecessary need for some users to take the long way round to access information.

In terms of web accessibility, the most serious type of problem is when a user can’t access information at all (for example, when no alt description is given to an image containing important content, such as navigational tabs). But there is also the slightly ‘softer’ issue where information is available, but the user has to work to get to it.

Are you sending your users the long way round? (Photo by incurable_hippie)

Someone recently posted to the Accessify Forum, asking whether it was a good idea to create an alternative accessible version of a website. I recommended that this be avoided, as it creates an unnecessary division between ‘types’ of user which is undesirable and potentially discriminatory. Making it necessary to click on a “Text-only” or “Accessible” version simply introduces another workaround which some users will have to use, and goes against the principles of inclusion and integration that Web Accessibility tries to promote. It reminds me of when you see signs for wheelchair access which take you round the back of a building – some people will have to take the long way round, and may feel quite inferior as a result.

Another example was during the recent televised UK election debates. When the second debate televised by Sky News hit the airwaves, there was immediate outrage across Twitter and the web at the fact that no live captions or BSL interpretation were available. This meant some users had to look elsewhere for the content – something they should not have had to do.

THERE ARE NO #SUBTITLES (why not?) on #leadersdebate it is NOT #accessible for 1 in 7 (70,000) #DEAF people @skynews you #fail!!! pls RT

An angry Tweet from Pesky People

Too much of the web involves these sort of workarounds for some users, and the problem seems to be that some developers think that this is good enough. Going back to the building analogy, there are often very reasonable factors which mean ramp access has to be round the back – for example, to comply with building regulations. However, there are far less reasons why a web site should require someone to take the long way round.

So if you’re a developer, give consideration to how you’re presenting your content and think carefully about whether you’re offering an equal experience for all your users. Forcing someone to take an alternative route or employ workarounds to get to your content, just as with my experience with Google on my new phone, may well mean they give up and go elsewhere.

Photo derived from a work by incurable_hippie used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people will blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made.

Diary of a Goldfish

For this event last year I wrote a piece entitled Defining Disablism which proved popular and sparked some good discussions.

I’m still undecided on what I will cover this year, and indeed may wait until the day before finally committing. It will certainly have a web focus. Watch this space! (update – didn’t get a chance to do this on the day but pulling something together now and will post soon!)

Visit the Diary of a Goldfish site to see a list of other bloggers taking part in the day, as well as links to posts from previous years.

In doing so, I was surprised by the variety of approaches taken by these best-practice sites. I had hoped for some clear trends and design methodologies, but instead found some striking differences. Of course, the presentation of the homepage is only a small part of the story on any website, and given that many users will come in via search engines (and thus possibly never even see your homepage), any analysis should be proportional.

Nevertheless, visual comparison of the 11 4-star websites does offer up some useful inspiration and the similarities have plenty to tell us.

Note: screenshots taken in March 2010

On this page:

• The 4 star websites
  • Allerdale Borough Council
  • Brent Council
  • Buckinghamshire County Council
  • Cambridgeshire County Council
  • East Sussex County Council
  • Exeter City Council
  • Newcastle upon Tyne City Council
  • Oxfordshire County Council
  • Salford City Council
  • South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council
  • Worthing Borough Council
• Similarities
• Surprises

The 4 star websites

Allerdale Borough Council

www.allerdale.gov.uk

Brent Council

www.brent.gov.uk

Also see the comments below for a link to Brent’s upcoming, minimal version.

Buckinghamshite County Council

www.buckscc.gov.uk

Cambridgeshire County Council

www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk

East Sussex County Council

www.eastsussex.gov.uk

Exeter City Council

www.exeter.gov.uk

Newcastle upon Tyne City Council

www.newcastle.gov.uk

Oxfordshire County Council

www.oxfordshire.gov.uk

Salford City Council

www.salford.gov.uk

South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council

www.southtyneside.info

Worthing Borough Council

www.worthing.gov.uk

Similarities

• 7 of the sites had clear links to RSS feeds
• All had links to latest news
• 9 of the sites put the main categories on the right-hand side
• Most had localisation features – often via a postcode search or similar

Surprises

• The length of the homepages was a surprise, with some stretching to three screens long (with a 800px high viewport).
• Many of the pages appeared quite text-heavy.

Is there anything else you think is notable about these screenshots? Do you have a favourite? Let me know via the Comments section below…