Note: I have then written an extensive  post about this subject and you can view it[Link]

For the past few months, I have come across high quality multimedia (video) photography work that comes with such unique storytelling that invites the viewers into their own work. This has a 50/50 reaction coming from myself because I believe they have left out one important element that will make their work even more accessible to the global audience.

And that is subtitles.

While I have a lifetime hearing impairment and thanks to today’s standards of subtitling, I am a strong believer that subtitles is for everyone and that is the international audience. For a long time, it was widely understood that it was for the deaf people and for world cinema. People forget the misconception that not all of us can understand the language spoken in their videos.

I would like to demonstrate 2 websites that shows off the idea of having subtitles or transcript to accompany their videos. First, TED. This website offers online video talks about technology, entertainment and design and offering english and other languages as possible, thanks to their own Open Translation Project.

And for the second website, it is MediaStorm. Each work is immensely thought provoking with stunning photography work with a transcript for you to read alongside the video. The screenshot below is an example how I am following the video.

The left window contains the video and the right contains the transcript. This can cause a few headaches since you would be tracking the transcript in a separate while trying to watch the video. I naturally developed to cope with this quite easily, although, there are other ways that this can be much easier to ‘read’.

Another thing on the web at the moment are podcasts and interview audios that contain no transcript to accompany it. I find that reading the transcript alongside the audio has a profound effect on myself along with looking at photographs. I came across Ciara Leeming‘s post who interviewed Elijah Debnam about himself living in Derker. The picture struck me quickly and the tone of the audio made this more compelling. With a quick tweet to Ciara if she could provide a transcript and she provided it straightaway with an update on her site.

The story has now gained a ‘full voice’ for me to understand completely what is going on. If you feel that you haven’t got an understanding from my point of view, think of a film with foreign language where you can detect the tone of spoken words and no translation. That is what it is like for me. There is always frustration for many people who can’t understand by what is going on and eventually gives up. Although, I have a huge curiosity and would want a transcript to help what was being spoken.

When you provide a multimedia slideshow, podcast, voice over on still photos, spare a thought for the rest of the international web audience. Would you like to tell the rest of the world what you have to say by providing transcripts/subtitles or to cater for a limited audience with barriers to languages?

Filed: words and tagged Accessibility, multimedia, photography, slideshow. Bookmark the permalink.