Not surprisingly, this guide looks at the issue of accessibility, including the concept of ‘reasonable adjustment.’ The advantages of digital media for accessibility are discussed,  followed by sets of guidelines and a basic accessibility check that can be performed on existing documents.

Note that this document is intended as a very basic introduction to the subject of accessibility. This vast subject is dealt with in depth by our sister service JISC TechDis. Pointers to various TechDis resources appear throughout our document: they should be considered a stepping-off point for exploration of the wealth of material TechDis supplies.

Read our Basic Guide to Accessibility.

Post-production covers the treatment of digital files once a recording has been done to help improve the audible quality and cover up any flaws from the recording stage.

This paper introduces the concept of post-production and discusses some of the most common techniques used to improve spoken word audio with screen casting tutorials and audio examples to help you get the most out of your recordings.

Photo by Gerrysan on Flickr - used under a Creative Commons licence

Screencasting is a hot topic at the moment, with the explosion of digital video on the web, and this advice document looks at some of the free tools available online which will enable you to capture your screen, microphone and webcam, and start publishing simple screencasts online. These services are easy to use, and critically they don’t even require you to install any software at all beyond a web browser (which, if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you already have..)

Online services are also useful for experienced screencasters, as they’re accessible anywhere, on pretty much any machine, and they offer some quick and convenient methods for publishing and sharing your screencasts when time is of the essence, or resources are limited.

Photo by ant.photos on Flickr - used under a Creative Commons licence

JISC Digital Media courses are run in small groups, giving attendees plenty of opportunity to discuss individual issues with the tutors and other participants.

The courses focus on providing vital hands-on training supported with well structured technical information to give attendees the skills, knowledge and confidence required to work with digital media (still images, moving images and audio).

The Training page has all the details.

Copystand. Image courtesy of kaiser-fototechnik

Creating successful screencasts requires a knowledge of the whole screencasting workflow, from planning, though production, to delivery. There are many elements that can go into a screencast, and in this workshop we’ll be looking at each stage of the process in turn, and how to maximise quality and consistency.

This is a hands-on session, and there’ll be plenty of practical exercises, guided by expert trainers with specific screencasting experience. If you want to know how to capture a voice-over narration, enhance your screen and highlight important elements, or tailor your screencast materials to your audience’s needs in any other way, then this is the workshop for you.

Workshop groups are small to enable more personal tuition, so places are limited.

If you’d like further information please email info@jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk, or you can book a place here.

The free-to-use tutorials have been designed to assist staff and students within the education sector to locate audio and video for use in teaching and learning.

Created as part of the Virtual Training Suite the tutorials have been funded by JISC Advance.

Internet for Audio Resources

Internet Audio Resources is a free online tutorial to help you learn how to use the Internet to find audio resources for your work quickly and efficiently.

Internet for Video and Moving Images

Internet for Video and Moving Image Resources is a free online tutorial to help you learn how to use the Internet to find video resources for your work quickly and efficiently.

Dave Kilbey, Training Coordinator at JISC Digital Media said, “the emphasis of the tutorials is on finding copyright-cleared resources, which are available free of charge; facilitating users with quick, hassle-free access to a vast range of online audio and video resources.”

These two new tutorials follow the launch 22 months ago of the very successful Internet for Image Searching tutorial.

GIMP is a free open source image editing program that has a comprehensive set of tools comparable to those available in commercial software such as Adobe Photoshop.

Our guide shows how you can simulate a shallow depth of field to focus attention on a particular part of an image using GIMP’s Gaussian Blur filter

GIMP can help you with simple and advanced image editing tasks - this document looks at the GIMP features that are of most use to those wanting to edit images for use in teaching and research. Read our Introduction to GIMP Image Editing Software.

Rather than downloading software and installing it on your computer, it is now possible to use web hosted services to edit and arrange many types of media files. Upload or record from any machine connected to the internet, and use these free online tools to manipulate, edit and convert your content, then download or publish the results. No special software necessary at all, and usually at no cost!

Our new advice document - Free Online Audio Editors - looks at some of these online tools designed specifically for manipulating digital audio, and examines at what you can do, and which service might be best suited to particular tasks. It is a companion document to our recent guide to Free Online Image Editing Tools, and we have a similar guide to online screencasting tools coming up soon too.