Is Accessibility Finally Becoming Mainstream?

I've been working in the accessibility field for 10 years now. It's amazing and gratifying to get to do something every day that you still feel passionate about after that length of time.

It's been at least five years since I heard someone say, "Blind people can use computers?". You won't catch me arguing that we've resolved most of the accessibility gaps that keep people with disabilities from fully participating in the workplace and society, but I do feel like we've reached the tipping point in the last couple of years.

And here's why. One of my many roles in my accessibility/social networking/web management job is as a content curator. (See this great article from EContent Magazine for more information.) For every piece of content I share on one of my IBM or personal social channels, I probably see 60 or 70. And I've just plucked a few examples as proof points:

•  The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act was signed by President Barack Obama on October 8, 2010. It requires that unedited, full-length programs shown on TV with captions must also be captioned when they are made available online.
•  Netflix recently settled a lawsuit and agreed that within two years all movies and television shows it streams will be closed captioned. 
• YouTube is now asking its viewers to report when a video is not captioned.
• The 2012 Paralympics in London sold 2.7 million tickets — a new record. 
• Oscar Pistorius became a household name last year, and I suspect most people saw at least one of the photos of him racing along on his high tech blades, like this great one from Fast Company Design:

Oscar Pistorius is amazing.

Here are two mainstream trends I've seen in the last week that I think are tipping point sign posts, especially since they are targeted at children.

American Girl doll with a hearing aid

• If you have little girls or know any little girls, then you probably are familiar with the American Girl dolls. They are diverse and inclusive — there are a multitude of skin, hair and eye color combinations available so that a girl can get a doll that looks just like her. In this article from ABC News, American Girl Dolls Embrace Differences and Disabilities, we learn that dolls can now have a miniature service dog in harness, a hearing aid or an allergy-free lunch kit, in addition to glasses, braces, crutches, a wheel chair, or no hair to represent those who have lost hair to cancer. As the author of this article states, "... it’s hard not to cheer for a doll company that goes out of its way to represent girls from all walks of life and every circumstance." Exactly.

Hercules and Brandeis

•  Canine Companions for Independence, a wonderful organization that provides highly trained assistance dogs to people with disabilities, published an article about Hercules, a Canine Companions dog, who makes an appearance in Episode 43 of Sesame Street. Hercules helps new Muppet character Brandeis find his calling as an assistance dog. I haven't seen the episode, but the video clip is very cute.

So there you have it. When a mainstream toy manufacturer and a children's educational television program encourage children to see and accept people with disabilities as people like them, who have stories and feelings and needs, we are on the right path. Finally.

Repost from IBM Social Business Insights Blog: Video captioning (Part 2 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO)

  Earlier this year I started blogging for the IBM Social Business Insights blog as part of a team of IBM Redbook Thought Leaders. I'll be reposting those blog posts here on my personal blog. Video captioning (Part 2 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO) was originally published on August 8, 2012, and is owned by IBM. I recommend checking out the IBM Social Business Insights blog for some compelling and though-provoking content.

Video captioning (Part 2 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO)

 

By Holly Nielsen, Social Media Manager and Webmaster, Human Ability and Accessibility 

In part 1 of this two-part series, we reviewed some of the statistics supporting the skyrocketing usage of video, for both personal and business use. Now let’s get to the heart of why you’re missing out if you’re not captioning your videos. 

Captioning videos for accessibility  

Have you ever tried to watch a video without speakers, or with your sound off? Annoying, isn’t it? You might be able to catch a little of what’s going on, but you know that you’re missing most of the action. People who are deaf, hard of hearing, non-native language speakers, using mobile devices, or in a noisy area run into this problem constantly. It’s estimated that the majority of videos on the Internet are not captioned, and therefore inaccessible to these audiences.

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) defines captioning at its most basic level:

Captioning is the process of converting the audio content of a television broadcast, webcast, film, video, CD-ROM, DVD, live event, or other productions into text and displaying the text on a screen, monitor, or other visual display system. 

There are two elements to making videos accessible.

• The first element is the captions themselves. For a full explanation of the requirements for creating captions, see the IBM web accessibility checklist Checkpoint 1.2a: Captions, or the WGBH, NCAM Guideline H: Multimedia.
  Captions can be open or closed: Open captions are burned into the image, similar to subtitles, which the user cannot turn off. Closed captions are a separate data stream that is synchronized with the multimedia. The user can turn these captions on or off. (IBM has developed an enterprise-level research technology, IBM AbilityLab Media Captioner and Editor, which automatically creates open captions and transcripts.)
• The second element is a text version (often called a transcript) of the video content. The IBM web checklist, Checkpoint 1.2b: Audio and Video (Prerecorded), describes the requirements for creating a text version of the content that can be accessed by anyone. It was created as a way for blind or visually impaired users to access the visual information, and for hearing impaired or deaf users to access the audio information in the content.
  A full text alternative describes everything that is happening in the video. In addition to the visual information, the text alternative also includes a transcript of all dialogue, and also textual representations of all of the video, audio, and interaction from the video.

Videos that include both captions and a text alternative can reduce or eliminate barriers to rich media access for many potential users.

The sweet spot: Where videos, accessibility, and SEO meet

Where does SEO fit into this picture? Right here. After all, if your customers can’t find your videos; they can’t view them. And if search engines can’t find your videos; they can’t rank them. But after you’ve captioned a video and included a transcript, you’ve now created exactly what the search engines require for indexing – making that video searchable – impossible to do with an uncaptioned file. Both users and search engines can search for and find keywords from your video; enabling video SEO.

SEO has been around as long as there have been search engines, web sites for the engines to search, and site owners wanting to increase traffic to those sites. It’s constantly changing as search engines evolve and become more sophisticated. Video SEO is a relatively new, but growing field, and will continue to gain in use and importance as Internet users continue to watch videos and new video captioning legislation is signed into law and enforced, such as the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 in the United States.
As a competitive advantage, captioning your videos is a winning strategy – both for promoting your messages, products, and services to a much broader audience by enabling more of your customers to find your content, and by making the content accessible to all of your customers, regardless of disability, device, or native language.

Repost from IBM Social Business Insights Blog: Video captioning (Part 1 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO)

Earlier this year I started blogging for the IBM Social Business Insights blog as part of a team of IBM Redbook Thought Leaders. I'll be reposting those blog posts here on my personal blog. Video captioning (Part 1 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO) was originally published on August 7, 2012, and is owned by IBM. I recommend checking out the IBM Social Business Insights blog for some compelling and though-provoking content.

Video captioning (Part 1 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO) 

By Holly Nielsen, Social Media Manager and Webmaster, Human Ability and Accessibility 

In this two-part series, we’ll look at the exploding growth of Internet video, and how captioning your videos can make them search engine friendly and available to more potential customers.

Let’s face it. We’re becoming a world that documents our every waking moment with video, and shares that video with our social networks.

Video started out as a medium that only the professionals could afford and had the skill to use. Technology evolved – shrinking in size and cost so that every smartphone and most cell phones now include a video camera, and we’re all amateur videographers.  

Who’s watching web videos?

Not only are we creating video content, but we’re watching it too, all over the world. A few examples:

• Pew Research Center reports that “More online Americans are using video-sharing sites — and they are doing so more frequently. As of May 2011, 71% of online adults reported watching videos on a video-sharing site such as YouTube or Vimeo.”

• comScore, Inc. noted in 2011 that Internet users in Germany, Turkey, Spain, and the UK watch an average of at least 30 minutes a day of online video.

• An article by Forbes about the explosion of online video in Latin America reported that in "March 2011, more than 80% of all Internet users in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile watched online video;" in fact, 4 out of 5 users watched an average of 8 to 11 hours of online video during that month.

YouTube is the world’s largest video repository, and as of July 10, 2012, the latest statistics were remarkable:

• 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
• In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or almost 140 views for every person on Earth

Businesses are embracing video

Businesses, both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C), have jumped on the video bandwagon, with good reason.

According to an article on Business2Community, watching a video can have an impact on the bottom line of your business, especially as high-level executives flock to video channels:

• According to emarketer.com, a majority of business people surveyed by Forbes in October 2010 said they watched more video currently compared to the previous year.
• Virtually 60% of respondents said they would watch video prior to reading text on the same webpage, and 22% said they generally liked watching video more than browsing text for examining business information.
• 75% of all executives said they watched work-related videos on business websites at least once a week, and more than 50% use YouTube to watch those videos.
• 65% of U.S. executives surveyed by Forbes in October 2010 visit a vendor’s website after viewing a work-related online video.
• 53% conducted a search for a vendor, product, or service for more information and 42% made a business-related purchase.

Invodo has collected a plethora of statistics supporting how video drives conversion and traffic for retailers, including these:

• 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in their online purchase decisions. When a video is information-intensive, 66% of consumers will watch the video two or more times. (Internet Retailer, 2012)
• Product videos play a key role in consumer purchase decisions, citing a 9x increase in retail video views at the start of the 2011 holiday season. (MediaPost, 2012)
• Visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy than visitors who do not. (Internet Retailer, April 2010)
• Retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer on average and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors. (Comscore, August 2010)

So now that we’ve confirmed that the use of video as a communication medium will continue to grow, we’ll look at where accessibility and SEO intersect when it comes to videos, part 2 of this two-part series.