This is a similar model to Knowbility’s Accessibility Rallies that provide training for developers in accessibility followed by a three day competition to build an accessible website for a non-profit organisation. The key is that developers get a grounding in what it is that people need therefore taking them beyond technical accessibility to real world accessibility, while we all get shiny new accessible sites.

A win win.

It seems that good things can also come in threes because after Scripting Enabled and Knowbility we have Project:Possibility. While on the Opera Education University Tour last week I met some really smart and enthusiastic students from the University of Southern California who had just taken part in SS12, an accessible code-a-thon organised by Project:Possibility.

Project:Possibility is a nonprofit, community committed to creating open source software for persons with disabilities. Run over a weekend in October the students worked on projects such as accessible multi-IM clients using the Google AxsJax framework, a community captioner and ways for visually impaired users to get directions from Google Maps (an idea also proposed at Scripting Enabled in London).

Google Maps is an interesting case in point here as it has been the focus of much developer attention. During Scripting Enabled in London a team worked on an Easy Google maps interface (based on Christian’s Easy YouTube interface) and more recently Patrick H Lauke wrote about Keyboard Accessible Google maps for Dev Opera. Having been criticised quite heavily by websites owners who want to include Google maps as third party content but can’t for accessibility reasons it’s encouraging to see that there are solutions out there. Let’s hope Google are listening.

I think Project:Possibility is a fantastic way for students to go beyond the text book and get some real hands on experience while benefiting the community. Learning at university can be tough at times when there are deadlines and grades to pursue and it can all get a bit academic (for want of a better word). This is why Opera published the Web Standards Curriculum, another community effort, in an attempt to help give people a framework upon which to build best practice web sites.

I wonder if we could get something like this to happen in colleges and universities in the UK and elsewhere, collaborating with any of the groups talked about in this post? I’d be curious to hear what you think, if this is a viable idea and if you’d be interested in participating. So leave a comment and let me know your thoughts if you have any.

Burma’s Junta have worked hard to keep access to the country by foreign nationals limited while the epicentre of China’s earthquake, Wenchuan, tucked away in the hills has meant that no news was forthcoming for days due to collapsed passes and mountainous terrain preventing even helicopters landing there. Power outages have also meant that making calls to find loved ones has been impossible. Texting and Tweeting however has been far more accessible.

In China in particular news posted by Chinese Twitterer’s has been phenomenal not just in terms of information but also reporting opinion and comment on how the government have responded to the disaster; people’s voices are coming through loud and clear. Having lived in China and considering it my second home, following people Twittering from China has given me a huge sense of connectedness that I’ve not felt before outside of China.

Just as I, as an individual, am following closely what is happening in China, the Chinese government is equally aware of scrutiny from other countries on the eve of the Olympics. Coverage on Chinese Central Television (CCTV) has been constant beaming not just images of the quake but also Premier Wen Jiabao visiting Chungdu, the capital of Sichuan province, within days. Something Bush infamously didn’t do after hurricane Katrina struck in New Orleans.

What’s important to remember however is that access to this news from these inaccessible places using Twitter would not be possible without the use of mobile phones. In countries such as China mobile phone usage is significantly higher than access to the web via desktops. Despite Chinese subscribers to Twitter numbering less than 3000, when traffic peaked in the days immediately following the quake on May 12th, Twitter played a disproportionately large role in the dissemination of first hand information. As reported by Rory Cellen-Jones on the BBC blog:

Let’s see, as this story unfolds, whether this is the moment when Twitter comes of age as a platform which can bring faster coverage of a major news event than traditional media, while allowing participants and onlookers to share their experiences.

It’s not just a comparison to traditional media that is relevant however but also Twitter’s unique ability to enable more people to simultaneously broadcast to the world faster than any other channel on the web. This, combined with being able to Tweet on the move using mobiles, is what really gives Twitter it’s edge.

Sources

• If you’re interested in listening in to what’s being said in China right now check out the Twittervision’s China page.
• For quality Tweets follow Fuzheado, Shanghaiist, Niubi and Shizhao (if you read Chinese).
• For in-depth analysis of how Twitter was used in China during the quake check out The Chinese earthquake and Twitter: crowdsourcing without managers.
• For discussion on the future of Twitter see Why Twitter matters.

Wikipedia describes crowdsourcing as “the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call”. This is an approach which is very similar to how Wikepedia itself crowdsources content. In the context of translation of a website this means simply inviting your users to offer translations of your templates and content.Large corporates, small companies or organisations all face the problem of translation. Even when there is a budget for translation there is often still an issue of quality control. One organisation I spoke to said that all translated text could only be published on their site once it had gone though four rounds of edits. Costly both in time and man hours. The reason for such extensive edits was to ensure that translated text was checked for literal translations that were out of context. A couple of the stranger examples given were”crowded camp” instead of “concentration camp” and “Enter” written in a sexually suggestive way in Russian for a submit button.

So when does crowdsourcing translation work? In the corporate world this is unlikely to be a huge hit for a number of reasons. Firstly it may not be the route that a large organisation wants to go down as they may have a strong house style and brand that needs to be stuck to. The bigger issue, to my mind at least however, is that people are going to be less likely to want to offer translations of sites such as these as they have no real stake hold in the sites and typically are not emotionally invested in these sites.

Crowdsourcing really comes into it’s own when you think of it in a social networking context. Sites such as Flickr, Facebook and WordPress have communities of users that are hugely passionate about what they consider to be their sites given that content is contributed to and generated by themselves. They therefore have a real interest in feeding into the translation process.

Facebook openly crowdsources translation by rolling out a loose translation of the site (some have claimed by using Babelfish) and then letting the users do the rest. Indeed the final French version of the site was rolled out on Sunday 9th March and almost immediately I spotted this status update from a French friend of mine: “Frederique is trying out facebook in French and is having a good laugh”. Facebook would do well to get her feedback as she is a translator by trade and has worked on translating series such as Sex in the City and now translates games. You can’t really get much better than that!

Crowdsourcing translation for blogs also fascinates me. I love the idea that a reader spots a post that resonates and inspires them and then goes to translate it. There are a number of plugins that the humble blogger can use to support translation of their own content. Worldwide Lexicon is a site that supports collaborative translation and has a plugin for WordPress: the plugin enables your readers and volunteers to view, create and edit translations to any languages they speak. This is something I’m definitely going to try out.

So what do you think? Is crowdsourcing translation the way to go for you?

Finally if you weren’t able to make it to SXSW you’ll be able to catch some of the panel discussions podcasted via the SXSW site. I’ll be posting about these together with any slides made available as they get published.