- (Sara) My name is Sara Dewitt,
and I am the Vice President of PBS Kids Digital.
So I manage digital production
and partnership with the producers of PBS Kids shows
to develop their games and streaming video and websites.
So really all digital production of PBSKids.org,
the PBS Kids video app, the PBS Kids games app,
and PBS Kids for Parents are all things that fall within my group.
- Can you tell me a little how you try
to make these accessible for children with disabilities?
- We are very committed at PBS
to being representative of as broad an audience as possible,
and also then accessible to as wide an audience as possible.
So, for us, that definitely includes
children with disabilities.
It also is thinking about kids across all socioeconomic status,
trying to think about how we can be accessible
to as many of America's children as possible.
And so we take that very seriously
and feel very strongly about it.
We want kids to feel like they can see themselves
in our shows and in our content,
and that they can play unfettered
with our digital content in a way
that allows them to learn and grow.
- Can you give me maybe a few examples
of shows or games that are accessible,
and the way they are accessible
to different kids with disabilities?
- Sure. So things like, just,
our shows that you might just see on television,
like The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot about That
and Peg + Cat, Splash and Bubbles,
those are shows that have closed captioning,
both on air and on our digital platforms
but also descriptive audio
and Spanish secondary audio on air.
Our new show that's launching next week,
Hero Elementary,
will also have all of those things when it launches,
for viewing when it shows.
And so anything also, then, that's streaming video,
the PBS Kids video app and the Apple TV version of that,
as well as the mobile versions,
will also, everything has closed captioning.
And then, in the game area,
a few examples where we've gone deeper
and tried to do more extensive work in accessibility,
I think the best example is a game
developed by our member station in New York,
THIRTEEN WNET,
they did a game for Cyberchase
called Railway Hero,
where they really were very intentional
in every piece of that game
to thinking about how it could be accessible
to as wide a population as possible.
They worked with Bridge Multimedia
and built in all kinds of additional features
like text resizing, different things for color contrast,
ways to turn music off and on,
anything that might cause any kind of sensory overload.
Just lots of features for children
with both physical and cognitive impairments.
And through that process, we learned so much
that we were then able to take
to other games and other opportunities.
So those are some quick examples.
- How do you make sure that all these features work?
Do you have a test group of kids you work with?
- So we test all of our games.
We have what we call a play-testing program,
and we partner with many schools
to go in and test with kids.
Now that so many schools are closed,
we are doing virtual testing.
So, recruiting families and doing testing
over video chat or by sending parents surveys.
But everything we do,
even when it's just at the paper concept level,
and when it's in alpha and beta,
goes in front of kids to get a sense.
And so we've been really actively working on partnerships,
where we then can be testing
with kids with differing abilities.
So one of the biggest ones
is with Johns Hopkins IDEALS,
and so we've been working with them quite a bit
to then test with kids who are in that program
and talk to the parents
about the needs that they might have for content,
So that we can learn from all of this
and see if there are ways
we can improve all of our games.
- So we've talked about captions and descriptive audio,
but I've also seen that you have
some content for kids with autism,
kids with learning disabilities, and things like that.
Can you talk a little more
about these kind of accessibility features you offer?
- So I think, for kids with autism,
we've been thinking a lot about sensory kind of things.
So that thing about turning music on
or being able to lower volume,
that's something that we've been
working on very specifically.
And then certainly in games that focus
on feelings and emotions and social-emotional content,
we, you know, the games are produced
for a wide audience,
and what we then are trying to do
is think about what scaffolds can we build in
that can be helpful specifically
to children on the autism spectrum.
And so, in some of those places,
it's not only offering the name of an emotion
and a picture of the character with an emotion,
but, like, we have a Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood app
where we then allow the child
to take a photo of themselves
trying to show that emotion,
so that you have different representations
of that emotion for the child to see in the game.
We have heard from a few producers
that the eye shape and the ability
of the character to express emotion
has been resonating with children on the autism spectrum.
And so we'd love to do more research
about that and what that is,
but we regularly receive letters from parents
who talk about shows like Dinosaur Train
and how their children are responding
to elements of that show in ways
that they had not responded to others.
- And if we talk about diversity overall,
especially representation of people, or children, with disabilities,
can you talk a little bit about
how you represent this in your shows?
- So this is a really critical thing for us,
and something that we feel very strongly about,
is making sure that, as I said,
kids can see representations of themselves
that are positive representations,
not being presented as a stereotype.
So there are several shows that feature characters.
The new show that launches next week, Hero Elementary,
one of the principal characters, AJ Gadgets,
he's one of the four kids
who are the principals in the show,
is on the autism spectrum
and always has headphones around his neck
so that he can tune things out when he needs to.
We also, on Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood,
Prince Wednesday's cousin, Chrissie, walks with braces,
and there are several episodes
where she and Daniel talk about
the fact that she wears braces on her legs,
and what are the things about the two of them
that are the same, and what are the things
about the two of them that are different.
You know, she doesn't have a tail,
and he has a tail.
She has braces, and he doesn't have braces, you know?
So really trying to model for kids
that the knowledge we have that kids are gonna notice
that something's different,
and to model good ways to have those conversations
about like, you probably really still like
a lot of the same things,
even though you may look different,
or you may walk differently.
Arthur is a show that has done a wonderful job
of representing lots of different kids.
Buster has asthma.
One of the main characters in one episode has-
There's a traumatic event in the neighborhood,
and he suffers with anxiety.
And so the episode follows him through
meeting with counselors and therapists
and working on ways to calm himself down
when he's feeling overwhelmed and panicked.
And they also have Carl,
who is on the autism spectrum,
and he's in like nine episodes.
He's a recurring character.
So there's just lots of ways that we're
incorporating characters.
And I should say that these aren't just being developed in a vacuum.
it's not just a writer sitting in a room writing it.
We have all kinds of-
The producers themselves who create the content
are often working with outside advisors
and with communities to make sure that they're
representing things accurately.
But then also, through this partnership
with the US Department of Education,
we've been able to then provide additional advisors
for our producers to contact and talk with
when they're thinking about representing
children with differing abilities.