Digital Media

Digital media are inherently transformable. Each medium can be designed to be adjustable in intensity and appearance. So, for example, sounds can be made louder or softer, text can be made larger or turned a different color against another colored background with a different color highlight. Images can be magnified or shrunk, edited or copied, or dynamically linked to tables or other data, changing the graphic display of information when the data are changed. These kinds of adjustments are called “within media transformations.”

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“Cross media transformations” change the essential representation of information from one medium to another such as, text to speech or speech to text. Both of these can be programmed into online tools and software programs via translation algorithms so that the transformation from one medium to another can take place immediately as users need the alternative medium. For example, if a student with dyslexia needs a particular word read aloud, the computer will read it on demand.

Other cross media transformations require interpretive work and preparation, with a particular instructional purpose in mind. Examples of these include image and video description in synthetic or digital speech (providing access to those who cannot see the images) and captioning of dialogue and other sounds such as music or sound effects (providing access to those who cannot hear the sound).

Cross media transformations are never exactly equivalent. Although the literal content may be identical, certain features are lost and gained when media are substituted. For example, through headings and the arrangement of white space text provides cues on the page or screen about what is important. When text is converted to speech, those cues are lost. The text becomes a stream of sound in time. Conversely, speech offers cues such as intonation, gesture, loudness, and facial expression, which are lost when speech is converted to text.