2 minute read. Content warning: Sighted person engaged in learning Braille.
chatGPT Summary: Kay, on their 6th consecutive day of a streak, challenges themselves to expand their knowledge of Braille letters while also discovering new video editing tools in Adobe Premiere Pro that can assist with their unique needs.
Vancouver – With teeth slightly whiter than yesterday and still going strong (streak day 6), I thought I would try making a short video today. Fette and I had a brainstorming discussion where I decided to make a physical object and have it be the centre of my short story. We had discussed how we could have visual description drive the narrative without slowing down a sighted reader, and that clues could be hidden within. The wheels in my head were turning, and I decided I would make a box that was also a book as the physical object around which we would build the story.
When I moved over to my drafting table, I realized I hadn’t cleaned up from making my braille flashcards last week.
After six days, I can 100% visually identify letters A through J on my flashcards and have a 60% success rate with my fingers. I am so slow with my fingers, and adding the next cards to my set will be challenging, but I decided to do this before working on my project for today
The book Braille for the Sighted states that letters K through T is the first eight letters with the addition of dot three (the 1st column, 3rd row down), but while that makes sense visually, it means I either have to memorize the letter by remembering it relative to the first eight letters, or I need to abandon that beyond knowing that I am in the middle of the alphabet when I feel the dot 3, or do it by sight and touch as a letter on its own. This set of letters will be much more difficult, and I need to be patient. This might take the rest of the month, for all I know.
I moved my mini-process video through the same steps as earlier in the week: iMovie to speed it up, text editor to describe it, Grammarly to make sure it the writing was sound, Speechify to voice-over, Otter.ai for an accurate and easy timestamp and caption creation, and finally, Adobe Premiere to combine and style the captions before uploading to Instagram, a tutorial in the Premiere Pro home page stopped me up. Imagine my delight in learning that Premiere has an auto transcript feature and that they now include an edit by text feature where you can cut, paste, and edit the video clips from the text.
For me, this is huge. I can only sometimes detect the sounds or dialogue, and editing my work is much different than when I’m working on files for other people. My day has been completely sidetracked as I fall into another Adobe Essentials training day, where I will learn about the new tools available in Premiere Pro. I usually do most of my work in iMovie because I am a capital-A Amateur filmmaker. Still, I do have access to this vast program with my Creative Cloud subscription, so I might as well take this time to learn more – especially with these new machine-learning features that let me both work within my abilities and further stress the importance that filmmakers produce transcripts and captions for their work.
I decided that I would colour Fette‘s name within this blog series. They have told me their favourite colour is mauve, and I asked chatGPT to provide me with the hex value for mauve. After cautioning me that there is variation within the colour “mauve” as to its exact shade, it informed me that the commonly accepted hex code was #EOBOFF. I popped over to the WebAIM contrast checker before doing the update across the website and found that it was barely A-level conformant and only when bold. I messed around with the slider but didn’t really find anything I liked so I decided to see whether or not chatGPT could help me find an mauve that achieved a minimum 7:1 contrast ratio.
Kay: Could you help me pick a mauve hex colour that is a 7:1 contrast to white?
chatGPT: Certainly! The contrast ratio you’re referring to (7:1) is related to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) which requires certain contrast ratios for text and images of text to be readable by people with visual impairments.
To achieve a 7:1 contrast ratio with white (which is #FFFFFF in hex), the color would need to be significantly darker than the standard “mauve”.
Using tools and calculations for contrast ratios, a dark mauve that would come close to a 7:1 contrast ratio with white would be approximately #5B3956. However, please note that depending on the exact definition of “mauve” and the specifics of display settings, the precise color and contrast may vary slightly.
Always validate the chosen color using contrast ratio tools to ensure accessibility compliance.
Kay: Thank you. I think I’ll use #74496E because this still passes, but is a little easier to detect as mauve to my eye.
chatGPT: That sounds like a great choice! #74496E is a lovely shade of mauve, and if it passes the contrast check and aligns better with your vision of mauve, then it’s an excellent decision. Remember, it’s essential to balance accessibility guidelines with the design’s aesthetic intent. If you have any more questions or need further assistance, feel free to ask!
Colour me impressed. Of course, when I asked if it had a favourite colour, it reminded me that it was just a computer program and it didn’t have personal preferences or feelings.