“My grandmother is one of my only family members who is interested in my family history findings. She says that I have found information that she would have never known. Unfortunately, she is losing her vision, so showing her my findings is increasingly difficult. Do you have any ideas or resources that would help me present information in an organized manner that makes the information easier to read or makes use of her other senses? She wants to be able to read it, but I want to be flexible for her.”

How fortunate your grandmother is to have a granddaughter like you who cares enough to change up how you’re presenting the family’s story. Since she’s losing her vision, you can focus on other senses such as hearing. And since she would still really like to be able to read it, I’ve got some ideas for accommodating that as well. Let’s start by making text more readable.

Here are 3 ideas for sharing family history text with accessibility in mind:

• Take a moment to show relatives with reduced vision how to increase the text size on all websites. It’s easy to do! Simply press the Control key and the Plus sign (Ctrl +) on your keyboard to enlarge the text on any web page, as shown here. In Google Chrome, once you hit Ctrl + one time, this little box pops up in the top right corner of the screen. If she can’t see well enough to use it to further enlarge on-screen material, she can keep hitting Ctrl +. That’s what I did to enlarge the screen here to make one of my family history blog posts easier to read. You can instantly return the font size to normal by using the Control key and the number zero. Or incrementally reduce it with Control and the minus sign.

• To make your blog more user-friendly for the blind, follow these tips from the American Association for the Blind.
• Adding tags to digital images makes them richer for everyone. Visually-impaired relatives particularly benefit because they can use their favorite voice-to-text tool or screen reader to read them. Here are some instructions for adding tags to digital images you upload to FamilySearch.org.

Accessible audio for the vision-impaired

If your visually-impaired relative has a smartphone or tablet and is comfortable using it, consider using a Cloud-based note-taking app such as Evernote or One Note to record “audio” notes that can be shared through the service. You can record yourself reading and commenting on your latest genealogical finds. Even if they don’t want to use Evernote, you can create your audio notes and then share them via private links, or even right-click on the audio file in the note and save it to your computer to be attached to a standard email.

If you want to really get into recording and editing your audio, I recommend the free audio editor Audacity (it requires a bit more tech know-how). You can save audio mp3 files to Dropbox or Google Drive for easy sharing.

Accessible video for vision impaired

It may not seem logical at first glance to create video for the vision impaired. But in fact, video as a medium is an easy way to deliver audio. If you have a free Google account you can upload your videos to YouTube, making them super-easy to access. In fact, if you visit my Genealogy Gems YouTube channel, you’ll see that I publish all of my audio podcasts as video.

You can create very simple videos using your recorded audio and just a single image. You can easily create these types of videos using free tools that come with your computer, or with video creation apps on your mobile device. (See my book Mobile Genealogy for my favorites.)

YouTube for the Hearing Impaired: Once you are signed into YouTube with your free Google account, you will have the Creator Studio available to you. This is where you upload your videos. It also features a wealth of production tools including the ability to add subtitles and closed captioning. You have 3 ways to add the captions:

1. Upload a text transcript.
2. Transcribe in Creator Studio and auto-sync it to the video. Type or paste in a full transcript of the video and subtitle timings will be set automatically.
3. Create new subtitles or CC (Closed Captioning) by typing them in as you watch the video.

Start by creating a video that includes the family history information you want to share (photos, documents, old home movies along with narration, etc.). The newest and easiest way to create videos like this (which are more complex than the single image video mentioned for the vision-impaired) is to use a drag-and-drop video creation tool like Animoto (use the free version or purchase an affordable subscription to get HD-quality downloads without watermarks). You can easily and quickly create videos on either your computer or mobile device using the Animoto app for iOS or Android. Animoto offers a narration tool, or you can upload your own mp3 audio file to the project. Download the HD quality video to your computer for archiving, and then upload a copy of it to YouTube. Add closed captioning.