General
Videos are great tools to use to learn, teach and share information. Videos are also great marketing tools. The use of videos on websites and social media has been exploding and it is important to make sure these videos are accessible by making sure they are created and delivered in ways that ensure everyone can access their content.
Why making videos accessible is important?
- Video captions benefit those who are deaf or hard of hearing, people who are learning disabled, ESL learners and those watching videos in a public space where they need to have the sound off.
- Transcripts are helpful for adding accessibility to those who cannot view videos due to disability or technical limitations.
- Audio Descriptions help with accessibility for people who are blind, have low vision, or who are otherwise visually impaired.
- Video captioning improves comprehension and retention of information.
- A popular statistic from 2016 is that 85% of Facebook videos are watched with the sound off.
- Transcripts convert oral audio into a readable text format, but unlike captions they do not necessarily display in real-time.
How to create accessible videos:
- Create captions for your video.
- Create audio descriptions for your videos.
- Create downloadable transcripts of your videos.
- Ensure your video is delivered in an accessible media player.
Captions
Captions are text versions of the audio content, synchronized with the video.
- Open captions are part of the video and cannot be turned off.
- Closed captions are not part of the video and can be turned off and on.
- YouTube’s automatically generated captions are a good STARTING point but they need to be manually checked to fix errors.
- Jessica Kellgren-Fozard is a great teacher and champion of captioning. These 4 videos cover the importance of captions, how to caption, and captioning best practices.
Audio Descriptions
Audio Descriptions are commentary and narration which guides the listener through the movie, TV show, theater or other art form with concise, objective descriptions of new scenes, settings, costumes, body language, and “sight gags,” all slipped in between portions of dialogue or songs.
In standard audio description, narration is added during existing pauses in dialogue. If however, your video conveys large amounts of information without enough pauses in the regular soundtrack for standard audio description to work, extended audio description can be used. Extended audio description is simply pausing the video to give a narrator enough time to convey the information in the video.
- Audio Descriptions help with accessibility for people who are blind, have low vision, or who are otherwise visually impaired.
- Audio description supplements the regular audio track of a program.
- Video description is usually added during existing pauses in dialogue.
- Audio description is also called “video description” and “descriptive narration”
- The FCC expanded video description rules, requiring major television networks each provide 50 hours of audio described programming a year.
- Individuals on the autistic spectrum find that audio description helps better understand emotional and social cues only demonstrated through actions or facial expressions.
Comparing Captions & Audio Descriptions
Still not totally sure the difference between captions and audio descriptions? Play these 2 videos of the same trailer for movie Frozen to see and hear the difference.
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