When beginning this project, I was really excited to continue contributing to the Wikiworld. Like many of you have expresses in your blog posts, I was also a student in Professor Cartwright's Comm 100B lecture last year and have previously contributed to Wikipedia. I continued my efforts beyond the original class assignment and found excitement in the countless Wikiprojects that I could make a difference in. I have since produced video for the Classroom Project "Wiki Makes Video" (PB&J) and recorded audio for the Spoken Wikipedia Project (Zorbing).
I found great reward and accomplishment when contributing to Wikipedia in these unique ways and for this project I decided to continue collaboration with the Spoken Wikipedia Project after thinking about the connections this resource has with our class.
We have been talking a lot about cyborgs, the current state of combining human and technology, and equality across all domains which has shown me that Wikipedia is a great technology resource for the typical able bodied human. What many people fail to see is that Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the masses but in reality is not inclusive as it could be.
I had never really thought about Wikipedia being used by people who are blind or can not read until I stumbled across the WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia which "aims to produce recordings of Wikipedia articles being read aloud. This allows Wikipedia's articles to be accessed and listened to by people who are visually impaired or can understand language but cannot read it.
Access to information for ALL is a key goal in FTN's "wikistorming" and I decided to record audio for FemTechNet's Wikipedia article to revise and enhance the article's access as well as contribute to Spoken Wikipedia.
Following strict guidelines provided by Spoken Wikipedia, I began by notifying the community of the project I was about to start (to ensure that no duplicates would be made).
I found great reward and accomplishment when contributing to Wikipedia in these unique ways and for this project I decided to continue collaboration with the Spoken Wikipedia Project after thinking about the connections this resource has with our class.
We have been talking a lot about cyborgs, the current state of combining human and technology, and equality across all domains which has shown me that Wikipedia is a great technology resource for the typical able bodied human. What many people fail to see is that Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the masses but in reality is not inclusive as it could be.
I had never really thought about Wikipedia being used by people who are blind or can not read until I stumbled across the WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia which "aims to produce recordings of Wikipedia articles being read aloud. This allows Wikipedia's articles to be accessed and listened to by people who are visually impaired or can understand language but cannot read it.
Access to information for ALL is a key goal in FTN's "wikistorming" and I decided to record audio for FemTechNet's Wikipedia article to revise and enhance the article's access as well as contribute to Spoken Wikipedia.
Following strict guidelines provided by Spoken Wikipedia, I began by notifying the community of the project I was about to start (to ensure that no duplicates would be made).
I then recorded the article using Garageband and edited the audio to abide by the rules. It took me about 45 minutes to record the article but the final recording is only about 5 min.
After recording the article I was ready to upload it to the Wikimedia commons. Below you can see the coding of the article into a Wikimedia Commons page. I had to give the recording a creative commons license and source it as my own work.
Continuing, I linked the recording to the FemTechNet article page under "External Links" so that it can be viewed and listened to directly from the article page.
Below is what the finished article looks like with the linked audio recording:
The Wikiproject next required me to inform the community of the addition and add a banner to the talk page.
Finally, after recording, uploading and notifying, it was time to add the article to official list of all completed spoken articles on Wikipedia.
While the task of creating an audio recording for this Wikiproject is very time consuming, I really enjoyed this contribution and an proud of the final result. FemTechNet is now accessible to a larger audience.
A final note on my project:
Before recording the FemTechNet article, I listened to many of Wikipedia's audio recording to try to get a better sense of the structure and timing. After the first 3 articles though, i began listening with a different objective. After 3 articles it became apparent to me that I was only hearing male voices produce the audio. I continued to click on random articles and listen, waiting to hear a female voice. After having listened to about 30 articles I have yet to find one produced by a female. Even within the Spoken Wikipedia Project, the gender gap is significantly affecting this resource. I am proud to have contributed to this project as a female in an effort to diminish this gap.
Article Edited: FemTechNet
User Name: k9taylor
This is a really wonderful edit to promote accessibility, and I particularly like how you documented the whole process and reviewed all the applicable guidelines. Excellent move to also notify the user community before beginning work. I didn't even know there was a FemTechNet article (and I am co-facilitating the project with Lisa Nakamura to take over from the pioneering Balsamo/Juhasz duo!
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