Help increase and expand your content audience by making it more accessible with closed captions.
81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, that’s over 50% more than last year. Businesses also use video to train employees, reach out to remote workers, and to communicate company messages to shareholders and customers.
Most future-proofing businesses not only want to create engaging, high-quality video content, but they want to ensure video accessibility for viewers. Companies want to ensure each and every person is able to understand the content presented regardless of background or ability. If you are one of the many organisations who know how valuable it is to make your video content accessible you might be wondering how best to do this.
Our suggestion is to use closed captioning. If you have not come across these before, Closed caption subtitles are captions that are only seen when the person viewing the video activates this option. They will then see spoken words written on screen, but they will also be able to benefit from active descriptions of sounds, music and other audio cues that greatly enhance the media. If you’re still unsure whether or not closed captioning is right for your business videos, here are just a few of the benefits:
People With Partial Or Complete Hearing Loss Can Access Your Content
About 12 million people in the UK have hearing loss and 466 million people worldwide.
Without closed captioning those people cannot fully appreciate the content you have created. They may find they are completely unable to understand the video message if visual cues are limited. With closed captions you can reach those employees and customers with your video content.
People Can Enjoy The Video Without Sound
Plenty of people still enjoy video content without audio playing, if they can. So rather than skipping your content when they are in a location where they can’t play audio and don’t have headphones, they can enjoy it using closed captions. This enables your video to continue to work for you audio-free for everyone.
Viewers with English as a Second Language Can Better Understand Your Message
Bilingual employees or viewers will be able to further appreciate the message of your video when the spoken word and audio cues alone may not be sufficient. Professional closed captions and English subtitles further describe and explain the message to boost the viewers overall understanding.
Equal Opportunities for All
Closed caption subtitles on your video provide that the majority of people with the equal opportunity to understand and enjoy what is being shown. This helps to boost your company’s equal opportunities compliance and also shows your commitment to accessibility. This in turn is of benefit to your brand and is something you can talk about as part of your PR, communications and marketing strategy.
If you’re interested in closed captioning for a more inclusive, further reaching, accessible video content strategy, make sure you speak to a professional agency. Professional closed caption services will be accurate, free from mistakes, and overall much more effective than speech recognition software or live subtitling.
Investing in professional closed caption services should be a priority in 2020 for any forward-thinking business as part of their video marketing strategy.
