Designing Subtitles for Accessibility in Nonprofit Videos
When digital material is developed to include persons with disabilities, users with those limitations can access the same information and engage in the same activities as any other user. People with disabilities are frequently denied access when the principles of accessible design are disregarded or disregarded entirely.
Creating videos that are accessible not only helps people who have disabilities but also helps other people who want to interact with your videos in a variety of different ways. For instance, people who want to watch your videos with the sound off while travelling on the bus to work.
A normal nonprofit organisation will likely have a variety of messages, as well as a variety of ways to disseminate those messages to a variety of audiences. For instance, who is the most important stakeholder in this situation? According to most charitable organisations, people are the ones who directly benefit from your objective or cause. You want to ensure that all of your customers are familiar with your programs and services and that they can quickly locate and make use of them.
What is alternative text?
The content of movies, such as speech and sound, can be converted into text and presented as alternative text. This assists individuals who are unable to hear or view the video to comprehend what is taking place. The 'alt' field, utilised to describe an image on the internet or within a document, is an additional illustration of alternative text.
Captions and transcripts are two forms of alternative text that can be given alongside video.
Why do we need alternative text for our videos?
Due to their status as public bodies, nonprofit organisations are inclined to include alternative text alongside their video content to make it accessible to viewers with disabilities. People who are deaf or have a hearing disability are included in this category, as well as individuals who have other disabilities that make it difficult to browse audiovisual information.
They are making their content more accessible to all users by conforming it to the requirements of people with disabilities. Not only can captions help people with trouble hearing, but they also make it simpler for people listening to the content in situations where there is no sound or background noise, as well as for people whose first language is not English.
The more individuals can engage with their material meaningfully, the more chance they have of achieving the objectives designed for that content.
Captions
A caption is a text that appears on the screen and shows what people say in videos. They might also provide audio descriptions for the parts of the show where individuals aren't talking. There are two primary classifications of captions, namely closed and open. In principle, we should be producing closed subtitles wherever it is practicable to do so.
Should I use closed or open captions?
"Closed" captions, which can be turned on and off, allow viewers who find the captions bothersome to turn them off. On many video platforms and players, you can select whether the captions should be turned on or off by default. Accessibility is not mandated in any direction; however, beginning with the visible captions conveys a strong message about accessibility and has the advantage of being immediately available if the user cannot hear the audio for any reason.
Permanent or "open" captions are another acceptable alternative and, in certain cases, may even be preferred for multimedia presentations. For instance, most videos shared on social media platforms have their captions open because the volume is off by default.
Here at Leon Animations, we prefer to use open captions since they are permanently embedded in the video, making them visible to all viewers by default. Thanks to this feature, users will no longer be required to manually enable closed captions, which will result in greater accessibility. Like our video for UN Migration about their Strategic Results Framework that features open captions in English.
Open captions can be created in any language or style desired, as they are part of the video editing process. Closed captions, however, often rely on separate caption files or streaming platforms' built-in captioning systems. These systems may have constraints on the languages or formatting options available to users. This is very beneficial when generating videos aimed at audiences in other countries. Like the video about “Migrant’s Debts” we made below for UN Migration. The video features an English voiceover but French subtitles.
Despite our preference for open captions, we have done closed caption videos too. Like our video on King’s Health Partner in London which includes closed captions in both English and Mandarin.
Using YouTube to generate captions
YouTube's automatic captioning service provides a start to captioning your videos.
1. Send your video to be hosted on YouTube.
2. Attend between two and six hours.
3. Sign in to your YouTube account again, then navigate to your Video Manager.
4. Click the drop-down menu next to the Edit button next to the video you want to edit the subtitles for.
5. Choose the Subtitles and Closed Captions
6. Click the Automatic Captions button.
7. Modify the subtitles that are already there.
Other Multimedia platforms to generate captions
Here are links to articles on captioning in several other common multimedia platforms:
Conclusion
To summarise, developing subtitles for accessibility in videos produced by charity organisations is essential to ensuring inclusion and attracting a larger audience. People with hearing problems, people who would rather read the conversation than listen to it, and people who are in locations where the audio cannot be heard clearly can all benefit greatly from using subtitles to make video content more accessible. Nonprofit organisations can successfully express their message, raise awareness, and engage viewers from various backgrounds by including well-designed subtitles in their videos.
