Because my project has a real world function of informing children on the topic of mental health and I am trying to engage with a specific audience, it is important that I make my animations as accessible as possible so that everyone who wants to can watch and learn from my animations.
Accessible means to be easy to use and approach and so making sure that there are subtitles available for audiences that have hearing impairments, and text that is legible for those with visual impairments are all things that will help to make animations as accessible as possible.
Adding Subtitles
Below is a screen grab illustrating the process of adding subtitle to my animations in order to make the accessible for those with hearing impairments. To do this I had to go to video details on the video and then select the language that I wanted the video subtitles to be in. I then clicked on the subtitles section and got YouTube to add English subtitles to my animations.
Here is a screen grab showing that the English subtitles work on the video, making them accessible to people who may having hearing impairments.
I also changed the typeface of the text that I used within my animations in order to make it more legible for those who may have visual impairments. Below is the typeface that I stated off using for my animations. While the colour means that the text is easy to see in contrast to the background colour, the use of a slightly cursive font makes the text a little heard to read, especially when you consider my target audience if 7-11 year olds who might struggle to read text written in this style.
I then changed all the text to a more legible typeface as you can see from the image below. The letter are now a lot more spaced out and are no longer joined up making the text easier to read.
Overall I have done a fair amount in order to make my animations as accessible as possible by adding subtitles to the videos and making sure that all the text within the animation is in a clear and legible typeface so that people who struggle with their hearing or sight will still be able to learn from my educational animations. If I had been creating these animations with the actual purpose being to show them to children and having them be an education resource used by schools, then I would have spent more time trying to make these animations as accessible as possible. Making the lip-sync with the character so clear the people could lip read from it would be one of these changes. However, because I am only a university student and this project is part of my coursework, the actions that I have taken to make my project as accessible as possible are enough.