SesameStreet.org Parent Qualitative Research, May 2011

Online Parenting Styles

General

+ Parents' level of involvement during online play tends to follow a normal distribution with the majority displaying some interest and engagement in their child's online activities.

+ About 1/4 are uninvolved (either busy, older child, or trust that site), about 1/4 are engaged 100% of time. This is a big 'do together; many of Dads do this. 

ss.org

+ Parents didn't easily find My Street or Playlists as they were too focused on finding one particular asset.

+ Didn't want social media tie ins with kids content, but did with the parents content.

+ 15-30 minutes is usually the cap for parents allowing their kids online so this is important for programming

Online Activities for preschoolers - general across kids sites

+ kids spend time playing games

+ watching videos listening to music

+ lookiing at pictures

+ drawing

 Kids Control Computer Time

+ Parents usually do not preview. In general parents do not spend time seeking out online experiences for their kids

+ They only navigate to kids websites when their child is sitting next to them and asking for online experiences

+ If a child's teacher recommends, parents trust this.

+ Sometimes the parent will take a quick look at the site, but once they see it's ok they don't generally dig deeper. They use a LOT of visual cues - characters, navigation etc.  

+ Parents thought there should be a 50 50 balance between learning and enterntaining.

parents of 2 year olds are more likely to browse and select any activity that looks fun and educationsal, they are les concerned with their child learning specific concepts.

older kids - more targetedf searching. they look for onlienexperiences that reinforce conceps and topics that tehir children are learning in school.

What parents say about ss.org

Pros

Safe

Educational

Minimal Advertising

Characters from one show

Good search results

Simple clean design

Cons

Characters from one show (less variety)

Kids start to outgrow characters between ages 4-5

In ss.org


+ Overwhelmingly parents start with the games section but then there are a few parents that start with videos. 
+ Next up they clicked on subject, theme or character. 
+ consider adding a filter that enables parents to select multiple characters and/or using the playlist filter for the overall site.
+ parents liked the idea of an age slider that would help them identify age appropriate online experiences for their child. 


Playlist and My Street
+ Were kind of hidden - people ignored them. 
+ after they were instructed to see them, parents enjoyed and saw the value in them. 
+ parents weren't really noticing or grasping the my street icons throughout site.
+ icons should all be consistent
+ some parents didn't want to use My Street as the site is already intuitive and easy to use


Parent Tips
+ Parents didn't notice them but liked them once they were pointed out.
+ Parents really liked some of the random facts - fun for the parents, especially for the high engagement parents as it gives them something funny. However should be contextually relevant.
+ Also a good place to promote Playlists and My Street


Social Media
+ Not interested in social media buttons, or links to purchase additional products. But interested in sharing parent targeted content. 
+ They woujld not share or like kid content 
+ Parents go to ss.org for FREE content. If they want to watch a sesame clip they can't find on website they go to youtube


Parents global nav
+ Parents are not taking time to look at the parents section. As they were there for their kids.
+ suggest put in parents throw in parent tips


Summary and Recommendations
+ Parents are  not taking advantage of the Sesame Playlists and My Street tabs. 
+ Focus on site and social media promotion on getting parents to recognize the value of these sections. 

AccessU: accessibility conference notes

I attended the AccessU accessibility conference in Austin, TX via a scholarship from Deque on May 17 and 18. Below are my notes from the conference.

The conference was intensely inspiring. Accessibility is a civil right that is currently being defended on the federal and state levels, including large in-press suits with Target.com as well as many other legally structured negotiations with organizations ranging from Disney.com (reservations), Amazon.com, Ebay.com, and content sites such as MLB.com, and AmericanCancerInstitute.com.

It feels like such a huge and important opportunity for Sesame to address accessibility on its digital platforms. Accessibility is squarely central to Sesame’s mission, core identity and commitment to helping ‘all’ children reach their highest potential: “Sesame Workshop is committed to the principle that all children deserve a chance to learn and grow; to be prepared for school; to better understand the world and each other; to think, dream and discover; to reach their highest potential”. With more Sesame and TEC content moving to digital platforms and very few technical impediments to making content accessible I am so proud that Sesame is looking into accessibility. Our work in this area can uniquely set us apart from our competitors (even PBSKids), will provide rich opportunities for technical innovation, and will be a really important story to tell.

Access and the Law

Lainey Feingold, Counsel for National Association for the Blind

· Web access is a civil right. This civil right is enforced 3 ways:

1. Litigation: a stomach punch, but hugely important and beneficial for public awareness. Most notable case is Target.com. United and Jet Blue are current cases in CA.

2. Structured negotiation: best approach as it is done in a very procedural way which adheres to best practices – including disabled people, firms, developers and designers -- but this method is almost invisible to public awareness. This is not just pre-litigation (‘do this or we’ll sue’). The following firms have all been engaged in structured negotiations that required accessibility brought about by legal action: Ebay, amazon, CVS, Ramada, MLB, HSBC, Travelocity, Priceline, Rite Aid. The biggest recent structured negotiation win are the 3 Credit Reporting sites which all relied on captcha, were very complicated cases, and tackled the very complicated issue of privacy (disabled people should not have to ‘have someone help them’ which would necessitate sharing their personal info with another person).

3. Attorney general investigations: very effective. Mostly in NY and MA, due to those states’ attorney general’s attention to the topic.

· CA/ FL are best states for remedy of discrimination with money.

· Do not engage lawyers without first approaching company, keeping notes, rallying like users/ organizations. Also check out: www.fixtheweb.com.

· MLB and American Cancer Society are good examples of content/ non-ecommerce sites that faced lawsuits and were pressured to become accessible

· Disney Resorts lawsuit is a good example for kids site…

Institutionalizing Accessibility at Fidelity Investments: A Case Study

Marguerite Bergel, Ann Chadwick-Dias, Fidelity Investments

· Fidelity: 40K employees, fidelity.com 3.8m hits a day, 95% trades are online, 71.2 m accounts, average age is 62 years, older users have the most assets. Fidelity: spends 1B year on web security, is quick to adopt new tech, user centered design is very core to the entire company.

· Per 2000 census: 20% in US report at least 1 disability, 10-14% in US have significant vision impairment.

· Evangelizing: Best way to evangelize accessibility is to have disabled users use your site in front of management, recorded sessions help too. Other tactics they used at Fidelity: scan pages of site and competitors sites with fireeyes or firefox wave and graph % errors and show your firm as not being at the top -- top management wants to always be at top. Discuss SEO improvements. Reputation and storytelling. Scan homepage alt text of top 20 competitors and bottom competitors to prove that top 20 have less errors.

· Build a steering committee from across the firm (50 people). People volunteered, no budget so met at lunch weekly to avoid bill backs. Compile standards. Business, Legal, Production, Developers, QA, Project Management, HR –Then ratify the standards. Nice to have someone who is apolitical, not high up, user-focused, to lead the charge.

· Have a charter: come up with standards, make plan, timetable, budget (see webaim’s 8 steps). Subcommittees for design, QA, business, development, editorial, legal.

· Resulted in: 36 standards categorized by topic – shared internally and externally. Phase 1 was 12 priority standards, Phase 2 was all 36. Remediation was separate, and is still ongoing.

· Start with most viewed pages.

· Accessibility should be included in page approvals process through CMS.

· Process document that breaks down each standard by who’s responsible

· Create test cases for QA, automated checkers get you in ballpark but you still need to manual check. But only do manual checks until it’s passed the auto-check to save brain and time.

· Do a JAWS demo for developers and designers.

· Test Schedules: Test multiple times a year with range of disabled users (not in every test group), have connections with local associations to ask informal questions and put designs in front of them for review. Go to their space – not have them come to lab is best.

· User Recruiting: be in touch with local associations for the blind, universities, local commission for the blind, listservs. Visual impairment recruiting is easier to do than mobility (check dialysis centers, independent living centers).

· Play wizard of Oz, mandatory trainings, awards for accessibility champions each month, newsletter, outside speakers – appear larger and more formalized than you are

· Tools: Omniture for weblogging and tracking, Toby eye tracking, 15 person JAWS license

· Book: Measuring the user experience, tom tulles

· It took 2 years, 2 people full time to get started up

You Can’t Buy Love but You Can Buy Accessibility

Sharron Rush, Knowbility

· 23 California Universities require all software and hardware to be accessible – major impetus for Apple to be accessible.

· Section 508 to relaunch this year (1^st time since 1998). WCAG is the gold standard that everyone uses until the proposed 508 changes are ratified – though many companies (such as Wordpress) have already adopted the new 508 requirements.

· K-12 is the scariest area for accessibility, very little being done in this space.

· List of toolbars such as fireeyes, wave.webaim.org, avail at knowbility.org

· Accessiblity_SIG in Google groups

· Buyaccessible.gov

· Wiki/knowbility.org

Accessible Flash 1: QA

Thea Burton, DoodleDoo, & Working with PBSKids/WGBH, Adobe, Microsoft

· See ppt slide doc and Flash Accessibility Requirements and Methods

· Matt May from Adobe: check out build in Flash, put in app store with Adobe Flash Packager

· Flash 6 in 2002 was first accessible version of Flash. But best to use only use players 8 and up (7 was buggy).

· 508 and WCAG 2.0 were written for HTML, not Flash

· Thea and Adobe working on books now, but as of yet there are only online resources (check out Doodledoo/accessibility and Adobe getting started on accessibility and best practices)

· Neilsen norman principles for good design for children, for character use with kids too

· JAWS is most widely used screen reader and only screen reader used by kids, but most kids don’t use screen readers until 4^th grade. However, as the general population becomes more and more tech saavy the JAWS average ages is dropping and there are 3 year olds using it. Great to get license for your organization, but free demo avail at: www.freedomscientific.com.

· Reader auto-enters the Flash, Flash flattens info to data tree and user needs only up and down keys to move and select.

· There are ways for blind users to use touch pads, screen sweep reads aloud press points.

· Check out accessible Arthur on PBSkids. PBS built this site but in user testing disabled kids could not use it.

· For very small kids, kids can only read signs (but on full ASL, some universal gestures, pigeon), not captions. Consider adding signs for just formal feature/ repeated, inclusive stuff (like in Blue’s Clues). But shorter captions always better.

Rich Internet Applications – The Good the Bad the Ugly

Marguerite Bergel, Ann Chadwick-Dias, Fidelity Investments

· Screensharing software to test remotely/ in home (subjects are chattier if not sitting next to you/ seeing their facial features. Also easier to recruit).

· Web 1 vs. RIA’s: Page vs state; links/buttons vs sliders, widgets, carousels; content in architecture vs content revealed on user activity; siloed data vs data aggregation; more user customization; multimedia as add on vs multimedia as internet; page refresh vs incremental updates; mainly html vs hybrid of technologies ajax/ flash/ flex); less solitary consumption more community oriented, creative.

· Sliders are passé -- people don’t like them, don’t manipulate them well, you know your age/ your answer and don’t need to slide to it.

· Possible to detect JAWS and change sliders to radio buttons, for instance.

· Dynamic dropdowns are very hard for anyone using AT

· Go to wave site or to let you see what other sites are doing for accessibility

· ARIA

· When JAWS encounters Flash it announces ‘flash movie start flash movie end’ – which wrongly implies that there is no content and that the content is a non-interactive movie.

· Flash requires tab indexing or will create concentric circles from left top corner

· Auto-play is an annoyance for disabled users, if you must auto-play place focus on pause button.

· With Flash, keyboard access is the absolute bare minimum you should shoot for, and be sure to call out how to nav via hot keys as text on screen. The highlight should be blatant.

· Make sure Flash is embedded into HTML correctly or will be invisible to AT

· Include keyboard shortcuts (ctl+P for pause/ play)

· Embedded hrefs are not accessible so design flash/ flex buttons to look like hrefs

· Accessibility must be at the movie and the component level

· Reading order is really important, and must be dictated in Flash

· Make Flash respond to browser text resizing, reverse color contrast via Flash add-on

· Letting users struggling with Flash is hugely motivating to designers/ developers

· Captions should be below video, avoid splitting focus. Captionkey.com or something similar list best practices for font styles etc.

· Royal Bank of Canada, Fidelity etc have all tried universal Flash players to try and deal with accessibility in Flash

· With Flash / Flex you must check off accessibility while compiling or all accessibility work will not function

• May 16, 2011 01:07pm EST
• 1 Comment

Disney's Playdom Fined $3 Million for Violating Kids' Privacy

By Chloe Albanesius

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Disney-owned Playdom was fined $3 million last week for collecting and disclosing the personal information of hundreds of thousands of children under the age of 13 without parental consent.

The practice is a violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Playdom develops online multi-player games, and runs 20 virtual world Websites like "2 Moons, "9 Dragons," and "My Diva Doll." At least one of these worlds, "Pony Stars," is specifically directed at children, while the others attract a wide variety of users, including young kids. Between 2006 and 2010, about 403,000 children registered on general audience Playdom Web sites, with another 821,000 signing up for "Pony Stars."

COPPA mandates that Web sites must notify parents and obtain their consent before collecting, using, or disclosing a child's personal information. They must also post a clear privacy policy. Playdom and executive Howard Marks failed to do both, the FTC said.

Playdom collected the kids' ages and email addresses during registration and then allowed them to post full names, email addresses, IM IDs, and location, among other things, on their Playdom profiles. The company did not obtain parental consent to do this, in violation of COPPA, the FTC said.

The agency also said Playdom misrepresented itself in its privacy policy, which said it ban kids under 13 from posting personal information.

"Let's be clear: Whether you are a virtual world, a social network, or any other interactive site that appeals to kids, you owe it to parents and their children to provide proper notice and get proper consent," Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the FTC, said in a statement. "It's the law, it's the right thing to do, and, as today's settlement demonstrates, violating COPPA will not come cheap."

Playdom acquired the Web sites in question when it purchased Acclaim Games, Inc. in May 2010. In August 2010, Playdom became a subsidiary of Disney Enterprises.

In addition to the $3 million fine, Playdom is banned from violating COPPA and mispresenting itself regarding children.

For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.