As we’ve discussed on this blog, video content has remained popular and is continuing to grow. The number of digital video viewers worldwide has increased each year since 2019, with 2.78 billion viewers in 2019 and 3.48 billion viewers in 2023. Additionally, in 2023, people are watching, on average 17 hours of online video per week. It is clear that video content is not going anywhere and it is a well-enjoyed medium.
However, you could be unintentionally excluding a portion of your audience. Up to 1 in 4 adults in the United States are living with a disability. Inaccessible online content, like videos, create hurdles for people with disabilities when they can be easily solved.
It’s a no brainer why you should make your videos accessible; it only hurts your company if your videos cannot be seen or heard by more people. People with disabilities may not be your target demographic, but that doesn’t mean they should be purposefully excluded.
Making your content accessible not only allows you to reach more people, but it is beneficial for SEO. As search engines index the information more easily through text, it helps your SEO to add transcripts and captions to your videos.
Furthermore, making your videos accessible is incredibly easy and cost-effective. If you’re wondering if your video is accessible, ask yourself these questions during the creation process:
- Is the content in the video easy to see? Are all subjects well-lit and do font colors contrast with the background color? Can the video still be understood without relying exclusively on sensory characteristics, like sound?
- Are there captions included in the videos, and are they timed correctly? If the captions were auto-generated by a video hosting site, have they been reviewed for errors?
- Is there a transcript for the video that is easily found?
- Is the video player easy to use? Can viewers pause videos and adjust the volume?
Adding these few extra steps to your video creation process will help ensure that your video is more accessible.
VideoRequest is committed to helping you make your videos accessible. Our video platform makes it easy to add and edit captions and a video transcript. VideoRequest also offers a text to audio feature, and can convert written text into an audio snippet that can be included in a video. With this feature, people who either have difficulty speaking or if you only have written content can have a voice in your video.
Start creating accessible videos in VideoRequest, the all-in-one video platform.
