Abstract
Our Abstract serves to educate about our project -- in a
nutshell. 
Photosensitive epilepsy is a condition more common among teens than adults, where visual stimuli trigger seizures. This study used the Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool (PEAT), developed by the Trace Center, to determine if online music videos are safe for teens with photosensitive epilepsy.
We chose the top song of 2009, "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas, as an audio constant for selecting videos. We sampled three groups of YouTube videos commonly viewed by teenagers, specifically, animated music videos, montages, and parodies. We compared them to videos with “seizure warning” labels. We expected few videos without a “seizure warning” label to fail PEAT.
As expected, videos with “seizure warning” labels had significantly more defects than other videos. Unexpectedly, montage and animation videos failed at the same rate as videos marked “seizure warning” (90-95%), and 86% of unlabeled videos failed with our selection specifications. In other words, a teen avoiding labeled videos would have less than a one in seven chance of picking a video without defects with our selection specifications of media we thought relevant to teens on YouTube.
Our results suggest that YouTube broadcasters do not adequately warn viewers of potentially harmful flashing. Currently, online music videos are unscreened, inadequately labeled, and consequently watching them is an unsafe activity for teens with photosensitive epilepsy.
Relevence
We beleive our project is extremely relevent to the world around us today. As the internet has blossomed into an information-filled world, so has online video viewing. A video online can be viewed by anyone, and so we basically want to prevent anyone from getting hurt by the media.
We do not want to censor the internet from bad videos, we simply would like an option on media sites to block videos that could potentially be dangerous, or at least display a warning.
Future Studies
Future studies in other years, such as 2011, include taking our results and actually doing human testing in centers approved for testing (such as Portland State University). We hope we can see how relevent our results are in the real world, not just by a few guidelines, to further affirm our view on Photosenistive Epilepsy on the Internet.
External Links
Here's some links you can check out for sites relating to our studies!
