UNIVERSAL USABILITY IN PRACTICE

Textual equivalents for images are easy to implement, and a succinct text is enough for an image, therefore, future research should be focused on SAMI, the closed captioning technology developed by Microsoft. It is still new and hasn¡¦t 
been widely used on web sites. This new method of closed captioning places the caption information in a separate file from the media file, and caption and media content can be developed and distributed independently. Previously, content providers had to include the caption information within the media file, making it difficult to add captions after the fact, to correct mistakes, or to provide captions for additional languages. Users will have great flexibility to adjust the appearance and presentation of captions to suit their needs and preferences. For instance, users can adjust the color, size, and font used for captions, as well as the background color. Future research can be put on what functions should SAMI provide to improve universal usability.

Since captions are used as an alternate form of audio/video content, it is important that all aspects of audio/video content can be translated into a visual equivalent. For example, captioning includes the description of sounds (e.g., "... the dog barks...") as well as symbols and icons to represent the type of content (e.g., a musical note might be used for music). Besides, there is not a rule for how detailed the equivalents of text is suitable for designers to provide to users. For summary or for a full context, there should be some meaningful rule. Future research can be directed to making the translation more precisely and to making guidelines for either a summary form or whole content of text equivalents.