Getting started

 

To get a feeling for what’s on the site, click on a category that interests you on the home page, such as “Heart Disease”. Then you’ll see the types of heart disease we’ve covered so far. Click on whichever interests you, say, “High Blood Pressure”. You can then choose to browse through “People’s stories” or click on a popular topic to see what our interviewees had to say about it. 

 

Or you may want to watch the introductory video by broadcaster Jon Snow. Click on his picture on the right side of the home page.

 

All pages other than the home page have a similar arrangement. Most pages start with an explanation of what you’ll find there. On the left and top of each page, you can click through back and forth between sections. You can return to the home page by clicking on the word “home” at the top of each page.

 

Feel free to explore the vast range of stories and information – there’s a wealth of experience and information here.

 

 

 

Finding what you’re looking for

Click on a category on the home page to get a list of relevant conditions. Or click on the button called “A-Z of Conditions” for an alphabetical listing of all conditions. If you still can’t find the condition you’re looking for, it’s possible that we haven’t yet conducted interviews for it, but there may be relevant information or experiences in other parts of the site. This is a good time to do a search of the site using the search box found on every page.

Start typing the words that interest you. A drop-down list of suggestions will appear if your words match “keywords” for something on the site; that means there will definitely be something relevant to your search.  But if no suggestions appear, the search will still look for the words you’ve entered anywhere in text on the site and there may well be matches.

 

If you’re not sure how to spell a technical term, such as a drug name, it may help to look it up in the subject index.

 

If nothing happens when you search, try again remembering to press the Return or Enter key or click your left mouse button while the cursor is still in the search box. A search results page should appear shortly.

Once you’re on the start page for the condition that interests you, you can click on People’s Stories to watch and hear interviews. These will be arranged in groups that should help you choose interviews of particular interest to you: people in a particular age-group, women or men, people with a particular set of experiences relevant to that condition.

On any page related to a specific condition, such as Heart Failure, you’ll be offered a subject index. Click on the “Subject Index” line on the left-hand side of the page. The subject index is arranged alphabetically. Click on a letter at the top of the page to open keywords for this condition beginning with this letter. They will include treatments, medications, symptoms, problems, common experiences and so forth specifically connected with this condition. Click on any item in the index and all the text and interview clips relevant to that item will appear.

 

 

 

Playing video clips

We believe it’s valuable to watch people telling their own stories, so video forms an important part of this site. We hope that these tips help solve any temporary problems you’re having with playing video, but if not, please contact us on info@healthtalkonline.org. You can skip the video and view transcripts of each interview clip by clicking To read what was said without video or audio click here on any interview page.

 

Introduction videos by well-known people and by doctors are available on the right-hand side of many pages. You will see a photo of them with a triangle. Click on the photo to play the video. Each person interviewed has their own page, reached through People’s Stories or through a topic within a particular condition such as Heart Failure. The interview page shows details for the interviewee and then lists summaries of all clips available from their interview. These are underlined. Click on any of these and a video player window will open and start playing: this takes a few seconds as the video has to start loading first. To pause or stop the video, press the square button in the bottom left corner of the video player. To restart the video, click the triangle that appears in the middle of the video player window. To turn the sound on or off, click the loudspeaker button towards the bottom right of the video player window. To get rid of the video player window, click the close button marked “x” found top right.

This almost certainly means that this particular clip has no video footage. This is true of a small number of healthtalkonline clips. If so, a small grey symbol will display in the black video window. Just play the video as normal to listen to the soundtrack. (You might want to try another clip in a different interview to confirm that video is still working in general.)

 

It is likely that sound is switched off. Check that your computer’s sound is switched on, and if so, try clicking on the loudspeaker button near the bottom right of the video player window. This button changes the sound mode between on and off with each click.

Click the pause button, bottom left on the video player window. You can still scroll up and down through the transcript text.

To view video in full-screen size, click the bottom right rectangle-within-rectangle button in the video player window. To return to the original size, press the ESC key, on the top left of your keyboard.

There is not yet a video history on healthtalkonline. Use the Back key to return to the relevant interview and click on the interview clip that interests you.

 

 

 

Other ways to hear and read interviews

If you want to read what was said without video or audio, you can click on “To read what was said without video or audio click here” on any interview page. This will give you the text of all interview clips.

 

There is no separate audio soundtrack for our interviews. If this causes a problem for you, please contact us.

 

 

 

Printing and saving

You can print or save any page using your browser’s print and save functions. You can also click on print at the top right of all video windows to print the text of that particular clip. And on every interview page, there’s the facility to print the text of all that person’s clips: click on To print the interview’s transcript click here.

 

 

Changing text size

Your browser’s View menu should have “Text size” or “Zoom” options. This allows you to increase or decrease the size of text in articles and interview clips. Please contact us if this is not enough to allow you to read this site comfortably.

 

 

Using forums

There are forums for every condition we cover, and a general forum. Click on “forums” at the top of any page of the site, then click on any forum on the list. You can read all contributions (“posts”) without registering. If you want to contribute yourself, you’ll need to log in. To register for this, click on register at the top of any screen. Follow the instructions to create a user name and password.

 

Forums are “moderated” and any inappropriate posts removed. For guidelines on using our forums, click here.

 

 

Sharing your own story

If we have already covered your condition or circumstances, the right place to share your story is one of our forums: see Using forums.

 

We welcome volunteers for the subjects we are in the process of researching: click here for our current list.

 

 

 

Contacting us

We welcome suggestions and questions to info@youthhealthtalk.org or click here for our feedback form.

 

 

 

Technical problems

Healthtalkonline is designed to be compatible with almost all popular operating systems and browsers.

If you experience any problems viewing our site, please inform us by clicking here.

 

If you are experiencing problems playing our videos, please ensure you have the latest version of flash installed on your computer. Flash can be downloaded for free from this site: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/