Staying Safe Online: For the Older Generation

Week 8: Using Digital Audio

Task 1: Analyse the use of audio on the Web

Selected websites:

BeInternetAwesome is a multimedia interactive game designed to teach people, primarily children, about online safety and digital citizenship. Audio is used for sound effects, ambient sound, and speech elements. The use of multimedia elements makes learning fun and memorable, promoting digital citizenship and equipping children with the skills to navigate the online world safely. Audio enhances the immersive learning experience, creating a realistic and engaging environment.

Audio is combined with video and images to provide a dynamic and well-rounded learning experience, catering to different learning styles. The use of sound effects and ambient sound creates a sense of place within the game. Speech elements offer instructions and feedback, aiding user understanding. BeInternetAwesome demonstrates the advantages of incorporating audio into multimedia productions for educational purposes.

Interland

SWGFL

SWGFL hosts an online safety podcast accessible within the website or via audio streaming platforms. The podcast provides information on various online safety topics, offering an advantageous option for users who prefer auditory learning. It covers topics such as protecting personal information, avoiding scams, and navigating social media. The podcast is beneficial for parents, educators, and anyone interested in staying safe online.

I used my findings to augment my moodboard which can be found here.

Task 2: Generate a portfolio of audio content

Using my moodboard, I found two audio files from the BBC sound effects archive that I believe would be useful in my website, I could use these sounds as button sound effects for my website; for the purposes of knowling when the user have completed an act of navigation, I chose these files as I believe they can be edited in a way that enhances the accesability of the website. The audio can be played below.

Button 1 Stereo High Quality

Button 1 Stereo Low Quality

Button 1 Mono

Button 2 Stereo High Quality

Button 2 Stereo Low Quality

Button 2 Mono

Task 3: Optimise your audio for Web use

This task saw me use Audacity to edit and trim content from my selected audio files and then export them. I also played around with the other tools in Audacity; such as changing the volume of the tracks. Changing these will have an impact of the usefulness of the audio, making it louder will allow users who might be hard of hearing (such as older invdivduals), to be able to hear the audio.

Button 1 shortened

Button 1 shortened with volume increased using gain tool

Button 2 shortened

Button 2 shortened and slowed using slow tool

Task 4: Exploring Alternative Options

Having played around with my audio files, and edited some (above) I feel like I have created and have access to audio files that can be used within my project that supplment my webpage and help promote its accessability. Furthermore, I now have the skills to edit and use audio for future purposes within this project. Audacity proved simple to use and there were plenty of resources availble online that helped with editing.

The files I have ended up with are going to be useful as 'interaction sounds'; which will be played when the user interacts with something on the website. As my audience is that of older individuals, having this means if the user is visually impaired, they can use this to know if they have clicked on something. Therefore these audio files are going to be incredibly useful in my project.