For readers with visual disabilities, navigating the web can be a challenge. That’s because 97% of websites do not meet necessary accessibility standards, even when 300 million people have visual impairment of some kind.
As for websites that are not designed with assistive technologies, browsing the web can be a frustrating experience, at best. With this issue in mind, Google’s Auditorial is an experiment to improve online storytelling for blind and low-vision readers.
What is Auditorial?
Auditorial is an accessible storytelling website, designed by Google, The Guardian, and RNIB, to adapt to a reader’s preferences. Simply put, it enables low-vision users to tailor websites according to their sensory needs.
How Does Auditorial Work?
Auditorial uses accessibility tools and features such as multimodal films, text-only modes, focus controls, video, and audio speed controls to tell a story. With customizable visual designs and audio features, Auditorial gives low-vision readers a chance to experience online stories, articles, and news in a way that they have never done before.
For example, if someone has photophobia, they can switch to the dark mode and enjoy all the animations in a seamlessly darker format without disrupting their experience.
How can you use Auditorial?
Auditorial’s customizable interface lets you choose how you want to experience a story. The Auditorial platform was launched with one story called The Silent Spring, written by The Guardian.
To play a story, you can go to Auditorial and click on Get Started. At any point in the story, you can tweak its settings to suit you better.
Here are the 3 ways in which you can experience the Silent Spring story:
1. Read a Story
When you click on Start Story, you can choose to read this story as an Article with closed captions. However, how is this experience any different from reading an article on the internet?
The difference lies in the many accessibility features that have been incorporated within the narrative to make it an immersive reading experience for readers who rely on sight and readers who do not.
Alt tags are more descriptive and in line with the narrative. Moreover, 6 alternative colour schemes have been provided so that users with colour sensitivities and low vision face no problem in navigating through the visual effects of a story. The visual settings further allow a reader to Enhance Image, adjust Zoom Level, choose Color Palette or turn on Reduced Motion.
2. Listen to a Story
Auditorial’s storytelling experience has emotion and emphasis—elements that are strictly missing in screen reading software. They convert text into audio in a synthetic voice, often not differentiating between essential text and its other aspects.
With sound design and intonation, Auditorial has allowed characters to tell their story in a way that is emotive, expressive, and makes for a brilliant storytelling experience.
Individuals with sensitive hearing can remove background noise so that they can focus on the story without any disruptions. Other settings allow you to adjust Playback Speed, turn on Ambient Sound or adjust the Volume and Button Sounds to suit your needs.
3. Watch a Story
Auditorial believes in providing a rich and engaging storytelling experience. That’s why you can watch a story unfold with visual effects, sound narration, and textual captions. You have the option to pause the story, fast-forward it, or rewind it by 15 seconds each time.
You can further customize your experience by using Visual Settings and Audio Settings. Visual Settings like Reduced Motion or Enhance Image are especially useful in times of watching a story. Readers with visual disabilities can go at a slower pace, or change the colour palette, or zoom in to see things better.
What Practices Was Auditorial Built From?
While Auditorial is reimagining the design world to add inclusivity into its practices, its writing practices are also setting the stage for incorporating inclusivity into writing.
Here’s a look at their inclusive writing practices that can serve as useful recommendations for future storytellers:
1. It Has an Audio Version of the Story
With screen readers being used extensively these days, blind and low-vision readers often feel discontent with the synthetic voice, mispronounced words, and lack of emotion.
Auditorial lets the main characters tell the story. The use of human narrators to record an audio version of the story can make a big difference in delivering a seamless storytelling experience, as Auditorial shows us.
2. It Steers Clear of Ableist Language
It is often unconsciously that we end up using ableist language that asks low-vision readers to “picture something” or “look at something”. Auditorial avoids such use of language by being mindful of the readers that do not have a visual base.
3. It Uses Binaural Sound
To enhance the excitement of key moments, Auditorial uses binaural audio. Binaural audio uses 3D audio technology to let listeners enjoy a 360-degree directional sound experience.
It is one of the best examples of making reality virtual. From busy streets to the thunderous downpour in a rainforest to a whisper, binaural audio can make one’s storytelling experience mirror a lifelike one.
Retrofitting websites to work with assistive technologies is undoubtedly good. But it’s not the same as providing an inclusive and enjoyable storytelling experience, as Auditorial does.
Google’s Auditorial is teaching us how a one-size-fits-all approach will never be effective in making the web an all-inclusive space. It is by offering different modes of interaction that we can make the web an inclusive space for everyone.
