Room to improve.

Let's make the genealogy world more accessible!

Now before you read this PLEASE read this amazing piece from Dr. Sophie Kay of Parchment Rustler.

Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash

Let’s face it, when it comes to accessibility in genealogy, I think we all can do better. I linked Sophie’s post as she talks about her own experience and where she thinks things can be improved.

When I read that (when it came out and tonight writing this) - it made me realise how much I wasn’t doing in making my content accessible to accommodate a wider audience. A few of the things I try to do is to add ALT text to images I post. One account I know that does this on Twitter / X (or whatever we’re calling it now) is the Society of One-Place Studies account. Every image has ALT text applied to it, accommodating all who view its content.

I will confess, I don’t tweet many images but try to add ALT text whenever I do. (Whenever GIFs are tweeted, it adds ALT text to it.)

One other example is when I was at the Bessborough commemoration back in June. I filmed all of the commemoration so people who were abroad could tune in. One thing I aimed to do (and did do) was ensure all of them had subtitles. [You can see those videos here]

But one place I feel I am lacking in making content accessible is my podcast, The Irish Genealogy Podcast. I was debating what was the best way of making transcripts of the episodes available. Looking at the transcription platforms that are out there, a lot of them are behind paywalls. However, Substack came out with a post today that has changed that. You can read that update here. [Although on an off-topic note, I do hope they add the ability to ‘listen to posts’ like Medium has in the future]

In short, they’re making transcriptions part of their platform allowing AI to transcribe podcast episodes! And you’re probably thinking, “But you don’t have your podcast on Substack?” You’re right. I don’t. Yet.

So, over the coming days - for the sake of accessibility, I will be uploading my podcast onto Substack and making the transcripts available.

I do have room to improve and I am hoping this little step might help!

[P.S. - please do read Sophie’s post — it’s brilliant.]