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It really shouldn't be beyond anyone's capabilities, though. In its simplest form all you need is a plain .txt file with the spoken words. Major services like Y
by jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
It really shouldn't be beyond anyone's capabilities, though. In its simplest form all you need is a plain .txt file with the spoken words. Major services like YouTube can take that file and align it to the timing of the video, automatically. Almost all the hard work is done for you.
Obviously all content is different, but for the benefit you get, it's hard to understand how any creator of any size at all does anything other than gain from such a simple and basic step.
- Kalium 12y agoSubbing is a surprisingly difficult thing to get right in anything but the most simplistic of cases. What a creator gets as a benefit is not having to do all the work of subtitling for the benefit of what will ultimately be a rather small - if not zero - boost in audience. There's a very real scenario in which you throw an accessibility party and nobody comes.
- jamesbrownuhh 12y agoA recent study of videos captioned by Discovery Digital Networks showed a 7-15% increase in views to captioned videos, compared to non-captioned equivalents. Genuinely properly studied and controlled to remove any other factors. Subtitling is not hard. It really isn't. You don't have to do it if you don't want to, but there are many genuine, measurable benefits if you do.
- greggman 12y agoWhy only captions? Why not require translations into all 300+ languages? I mean there are billions of people who can't understand whatever language the video is in and therefore can't access these videos. It seems to me if it's the responsibility of people who can't understand the video to deal with that themselves (learn the language, hire a translator, etc...). Why is that different if your language is sign language or something else?
- jamesbrownuhh 12y agoJust a single native-language caption track is all that's necessary. Computers can already do a pretty good job of translating that into the hundreds of other possible languages.
- teraflop 12y agoThis is extremely dependent on which languages you're talking about. For instance, my experience with automatic translation between Japanese and English varies from "jumbled, but conveys the gist of the original text" to "entirely incoherent". (Bing seems to do slightly better than Google, incidentally.)
- jamesbrownuhh 12y agoAccepted. Far better than nothing at all (in most cases) though, I'd suggest.
- icebraining 12y agoI think the point people are making is that a video without captions is also far better than no video at all.
- jamesbrownuhh 12y agoI don't disagree with that in the slightest. Even a video that is not captioned today, could be captioned tomorrow.