Providing videos with accurate captions and a customisable media player is crucial for accessibility. Although automatic speech recognition has advanced rapidly in recent years, creating and delivering accessible videos can be challenging. Especially when commercial software is not available due to economic constraints. The production can involve multiple tools, including local video capture software, online transcription services, and content management systems. Such a workflow requires technical expertise, is error prone and time-consuming due to manual steps and waiting periods. The involvement of free transcription services may also raise privacy concerns. Some steps may need to be repeated (e.g. re-uploading subtitles after manual correction) or are irreversible (e.g. baked subtitles or picture-in-picture recordings).

We present an open source video platform specifically designed to reduce the effort and knowledge required to create accessible videos. Users can record videos directly in the browser and captions are automatically generated using state-of-the-art speech recognition software. The resulting recording can be easily distributed via a secure URL or as an embeddable HTML snippet launching an accessible web player that supports the individual preferences of a diverse audience. Additional steps such as manual correction or automatic translation of subtitles are applied directly to the shared video. The software is particularly suited for educational institutions and can be self-hosted, making it fully GDPR compliant.

We will show a live demo of the platform, present its key features and look at future developments in live streaming, audio description, and speech translation. We invite the audience for an open discussion and to test the platform online.

Digital technologies have become an increasingly important part of peoples lives. Despite the pervasive presence of mobile phones, applications and online applications there are many people who struggle with the digital world. These include older people and people with disability and others who find themselves unable to access these technologies for other reasons such as language or situational impairment, The European Network for Technology Enhanced Learning in an Inclusive Society (Entelis) (https://www.entelis.net/) highlights this challenge as a digital divide whereby significant groups of people are excluded from digital services that many other enjoy and benefit from.

Poorly designed software applications, poor UX, inaccessible websites and online content all contribute to this problem. (Savidis and Stephanidis, 2006, McDowell and Kwong, 2020) Designing and developing better more inclusive online content and services would seem an obvious response. However many software developers are unaware inclusive design practices such as co-design [Refs] and standards and guidelines such as WCAG to address these issues.

In response to this the Inclusion4U (https://ascnet.ie/inclusion4eu-website/) project (O'Sullivan, et al., 2023) was initiated to address digital exclusion in software design and development,. Inclusion4EU, funded under the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership programme is a partnership of European Universities whose aim is to o address digital exclusion in software design and development, The aim of the Inclusion4EU project, is co-create a framework, guidelines and checklists for inclusive software design and development with co-design teams formed of academics with expertise in inclusive design, software designers and developers, and persons from excluded categories including older adults and persons with physical and cognitive disabilities..

A key strategy of the Inclusion4U project is to develop resources around co-design and co-creation, since these are seen as important ways of realising Active inclusion in the design and development of more inclusive software. As part pf this effort we are designing and developing a number of workshops whose aim is to promote aspects of co-design and to introduce some of the processes and resources needed to support this.

Here we propose to design and run a 1 hour co-design workshop at ICCHHP. We propose to run this as a contribution to the innovation sessions of the conference

The core activity of the workshop will be to introduce co-design through a design exercise. This exercise will look at an existing design of an AT product like a pen and strive to develop an improved design using co-design methods and resources.

The workshop will begin with a short introduction to co-design. This will be followed by an exploration of the AT product noting its design features. Then using co-design resources such as I Like What-if tools participants will offer up suggestions as to how the design can be improved. The workshop will end with a reflection on the process and resources used.

Feedback on the workshop will be used to inform the structure and design of these workshops going forward.

Resources needed for the workshop include, a room with tables and chairs and standard projection facilities.