A visually impaired person can use the platform to look for narrated video content. In case video doesn’t exist yet a narration request can be sent.
Volunteers – who will be mainly sighted, but also visually impaired people can help with translations – will narrate videos in the queue.
Although the site can be browsed without logging in users may register to access additional features.
The goal of the platform for blind is to easily find videos in various categories. We shall use categories given on leading video platforms as a base of reference. Given this we need a category list which filters down the videos and a search tool to easily find them by title. The search tool should also accept URLs, thus people can easily check of a video on an another platform is available here in with a narrative version. If the result is empty for an URL search, the system should offer to “ask narration for this video”. In case the user is logged in as a blind person the video goes directly to the wish list, if the user is not logged in, we ask for registration first.
The wish list
As described previously blind people may request for a video from an another platform. This goes to their wishlist, and they will get notified whenever a new narration arrives to the video. One registered blind user have up to 5 narration request at a time. Items may be removed at any time from the wish list.
Request queue
This queue includes all videos added by the blind to the wish list. We are not enforcing volunteers to go by date however we’d like to set a preferred order. Thus the list has to be ordered by request date ascending, meaning those videos will be on the top of the queue which are awaiting there for a long time. This list should not be at a prioritised place for the blind but should be available as well, so they could “vote up” a video. This feature will give an additional level of prioritisation to the queued items. Each video starts with one vote by the requester and the requester shall not be able to vote for his own video again, however may vote for other users’ videos unlimited times.
In the request queue one can see the video title, name of the user who requested, number of votes and the name of the volunteer who is (volunteers who are) working on it. As long as there is no volunteer working on the narration there is a “Create narration” button is visible. When clicked the list will indicate that someone is already working on the narration of the video. However, if another volunteer goes to the detail page of the video, may add a narration regardless that someone else is working on it already. Said this, one video may have multiple narrations and by default the first one sent in will be the default one. One volunteer may mark one video as the one he/she is working on.
If no narration received within 3 days, the user will be removed to be marked on the video, however still can send in the narrative track without issue. The whole marking system is just to avoid too many people working on the same video while others videos are awaiting in the queue.
Upload new video by the community
Requesting videos by the blind is not the only way how content may be registered in the system. If a video author takes the time to create a proper narration for the video they may add their own content on the platform. Uploading a narrative track is mandatory for these videos.