Artifact Research

This section will provide tips, articles, and resources on how to make your research more accessible for student and public use. 

Using plain language

Using plain language does not have to mean that all the luster, knowledge, and fun are stripped away from your research.  What it can do is act as a reflection on our consciousness of our intended audience’s needs and expectations.  However, there may be times when, for example, an artifact is found in Ancient History or even history from not so long ago. That artifact comes with terms that are difficult to convey in English.  This is when explanations should be utilized to ensure the text is more readable and presents causes and effects, views, and issues.  Maintaining these qualities will help your research reach more diverse and even broader audiences.

Tell a story

Maintain your narrative.  In research, sometimes bridging the gap between concepts and historical events with your audience can be challenging, but gaining attraction from your audience is worth it.  Your narrative can help your research become more accessible by connecting your artifact or data to the present, a human experience, and a broader context.

Visuals

A great way to make your research accessible to a general audience is to use images, maps, photography, or videos.  Visuals help break up bulks of text and, in return, build a higher interest and variety.  However, when using visuals, we must remember to make our color and audio decisions effectively, especially with individuals who are visually impaired or hard of hearing.  Color, placement, and sound are vital in conveying the correct pieces of information because they will provide visual cues, maintain narrative and flow, and strengthen readability.

Accessibility Checker

• Ainspector Sidebar (for Firefox)
  AInspector Sidebar evaluates the accessibility compliance of web pages based on WCAG 2.0 requirements using OpenAjax Alliance rulesets. It organizes the evaluation results by Rule Categories and WCAG Guidelines.

• Functional Accessibility Evaluator 2.0
  Spiders a website for WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA requirements and generates a summary report.

• Accessibility Bookmarklets
  Browser add-ons that help make hidden accessibility information visible to sighted developers.

• WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool)
  Paste your URL into this tool to check for web accessibility errors. Chrome and Firefox extensions are also available.

Color Contrast Checker

• WebAIM's Color Contrast Checker
  The Color Contrast Check tool allows you to specify a foreground and a background color and determine if they provide enough contrast when viewed by someone with color deficits or on a black-and-white screen.

• WCAG Contrast Checker (Firefox Add-on)
  Checks for compliance with the contrast levels, brightness, and shine in the foreground and background textual content color combination based on WCAG 1 and WCAG 2 requirements.

Caption

• Kaltura Captioning Support Process Overview
  Use this page to find topics related to managing closed captions on your videos using Kaltura in Canvas and MediaSpace. Captions are the text equivalent of what's being said and other auditory information in a video. Closed captions are text that does not appear under a video by default but can be turned on by the viewer.