While I am best known for improving existing H5P content types and creating new ones, I am also involved in other H5P-related projects. For example, I have been working with NDLA on the H5P Caretaker.
The Caretaker is a tool that can be used to check H5P content for issues that may be an impediment to content sharing:
- Are all alt tags of images set? (impacts accessibility)
- Has licensing information been added? (impacts licensing, of course)
- Are there any incompatible licenses used across different subcontent types? (also licensing)
- Does an image’s file size exceed what feels to be required? (impacts file size and loading time)
- …
On top of that, you get informational messages telling you if a content type supports to resume, scoring, etc. Also, the LibreText H5P Accessibility Guide reports are fetched from their server (takes a second, but is cached) – they make them available via an API, thumbs up for that!
Things are basically done, but a final round of testing is needed, and maybe some things will be tweaked.
How can I use it?
Currently the H5P Caretaker is a web-based tool. There is a reference implementation based on PHP that can be installed directly on a server. There also is also a plugin for WordPress and there will be one for Drupal and Moodle.
Once installed, there will be a page that you can upload H5P content files to and that will show you a report. I do not want to offer such a page for the general public forever – you’re supposed to host this yourself – but for the time being, please find an instance of the reference implementation for testing:
https://snordian.de/h5p-caretaker-server/
Can this or that be changed?
Probably! The H5P Caretaker is open source software and expanding it is welcome. The tool was split into three parts:
- The H5P Caretaker library (running on the server).
- The H5P Caretaker reference client (running in your browser)
- An H5P Caretaker integration like the H5P Caretaker server or the H5P Caretaker WordPress plugin (tying the library and the client together)
Please note that the links will take you to the code repositories on github, which require some knowledge to install, and the readme files still need attention. Downloading the code for the WordPress plugin will not give you an installable zip file.
The modular approach mentioned above makes it easier to work with – you only touch what you need: Like the features in general, but don’t like the look or feel as it does not match your platform? Just modify the client. Want to check for more issues and add messages? Just change the library. Want a plugin for your host system? Just reuse the library and the client and use them in your plugin.
Future plans
After eventually releasing the reference implementation and the WordPress plugin on the WordPress plugin repository, there will be plugins for Drupal and moodle. When those are out, we have reached the end of phase 1.
Phase 2 is going to involve allowing fixing things in H5P content directly without having to edit the content in the H5P editor. NDLA will most likely also include their own accessibility reports in the H5P Caretaker analysis.
Phase 3 is supposed to automate fixing H5P content by using large language models, e. g. retrieving image descriptions for alternative texts.
After that: Who knows … But please be aware that I am not the right addressee for bug reports, suggestions or similar inquiries. Please reach out to NDLA once they release the H5P Caretaker officially.