Speaker 1: At first, I need to disclose that I was born deaf, and I'm still learning English language. My primary language is Russian, and my native language is Kazakh. So, I came to the United States five years ago, and I need a transcript. I heard yesterday about a cause I want to be aware of. Most of the web is accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people, because the web is represented mostly in the visual and text format. But with the web's continuous development, more video, audio, and multimedia content is made. So, a large chunk of the web is potentially inaccessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people. So, in fact, from my personal experience, a large part of it is completely inaccessible. So, I'm going to show quickly examples of the video that I was recently previewing. Okay, I'm going to click on this link. In the video, I'm going to turn on the sound. So, I cannot find any captions here. No open captions, no closed captions. So, I have no idea what this is about. Normally, when I don't understand the content of the video, I start to Google for the transcripts, or I start to Google for the different information from the different resources about what is this video about, because it's interesting. It's really interesting. It's about a physical teacher who is taking care of his school children, and who is raising a son with a disability. So, that's what I understood. I didn't find any transcripts on it, but I just watched it, and that's my guess. So, here are more videos, even TED Talks. A lot of videos on the TED Talks, the captions, but not this one. It's a deaf in the military. I was personally interested in the military before, and this is about a deaf person, but not for the deaf people. So, I cannot find captions, but the person here is speaking in sign language, which I don't know. A lot of deaf and hard of hearing people, they were raised speaking orally. A long time ago, deaf schools and deaf gatherings were prohibited. Alexander Graham Bell, have you heard about this name? So, this person is famous, but he's also notoriously famous in the deaf culture, because he was the one who was opposing to the marriage of deaf people between each other, and he didn't want deaf people to learn sign language. So, sign language is a natural language for the deaf people, and we were forced to learn to speak instead of using our natural way to learn sign. But now, I'm learning sign language. It's very difficult. It's not as easy as I'm sure. So now, they have a sound for hearing people, so people can understand what this man is talking about, but I have no access to it, and I was not able to locate any kind of transcript. He's a good example of accessible content I love. I'm a big fan of astronomy, so NASA is my favorite website. Okay, so recently I was learning about the Gamma Ray Telescope, and NASA has a lot of good information on it. So, they have closed captions in it, which I click. It's good. It shows that it's music. I don't hear the music, but it tells me that the music is playing. It's good to know. So, there's a narrator, and everything is synchronized, and everything is understandable. I'm glad that NASA is doing a good job in making the content accessible. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to enjoy astronomy. There are a lot of types of captions. A lot of people don't know the difference between them. Closed captions are captions that can be turned on and off by a click on a button or toggle. They give a text representation to every sound occurrence, like music, or boom, or background noise, like baby crying. They give everything. Open captions are captions that are put into the video. You cannot hide them. So, they are always displayed. Live captions are real-time captions. There are a lot of third-party companies that provide live captions for conferences, lectures, classes, everything where deaf people need to get access. So, they provide very fast and very accurate transcription. Subtitles. A lot of people make subtitles and closed captions and open captions mixed, but it's different. Subtitles are text provided for the translation. For example, if you watch a movie and there's, for example, Russian, or speaking Russian, and it's not translated, but you will hear subtitles. But it's important to know the difference, because if you contact companies that provide captions to your video, and if you tell them you need subtitles, they will not transcribe the sound. They will transcribe only spoken words. Benefits of the captions. Captions benefit, they help to expand audience on your website. So, how? A lot of people actually like captions and any kind of text, interpretation, information on the videos. Deaf people and hard-of-hearing people, people that are learning English as a second, third language. I personally know a lot of foreign people that prefer to watch movies and videos with captions, because they cannot understand what they're speaking about. There are a lot of people with auditory processing disorder. It's kind of related to the cognitive disabilities, and so they can be more visual than listening. Some people just prefer to read instead of listening. So, larger audience is better business. Also, I have to mention that a lot of people watch videos or any kind of video content in public places, in the libraries, and not everyone is carrying headphones with them, right? So, you just cannot listen loud. So, it's good to have captions on your video. Benefits, more benefits. Captions and transcripts are considered a full and accurate representation of your video. Your video content is more searchable on the web. The websites with full and quality of content are more likely to be displayed on the top of the organic search. Organic search is unpaid search results, so they're displayed on the top. Captions have been shown to increase the viral engagement and view time. The more engagement on the page, the more likely this page will be displayed on the top of the search results. Okay, captions are not rocket science. It's very easy to make them. Captions, they require very minimal introduction to your code, if any at all. They're easy to create and edit. You have access to a lot of free online tools. Even my children in elementary school, they even say they know how to caption videos. It's very easy to do a school project, and they make them caption it. So, I have three helpers. Okay, and a lot of third-party providers, they also can do this work for a reasonable fee. There's a lot of them all over the world, and they're competitive. So, they're different. Some of them are overpriced, and some of them will do this for a more reasonable price, especially for people that live somewhere in Asia, where the cost of life is super. And it works. Okay, and beware of autocaptions. This is very, very, very common. A lot of people think that they turn on the autocaptions, and they're done. So, I'm taking classes at the college, and there are a lot of classes online. And my teacher, she gives a lot of tutorials, and she's using autocaptions. I don't know. Of course, I don't know about that, but a lot of subjects I'm able to find. I don't rely on the specific tutorials, so I just look around on the external websites, on the different ones. For example, if you provide a video content, if you don't provide a caption, it's more likely that the person who visited your content will leave it after a couple of seconds. So, I'm going to show you examples of autocaptions. This is them. I don't need it. So, you can see them. Everybody can read? So, this is a video from the disabled American veterans. The audio says, And captions transcribe it like, So, this is a video from Los Angeles Philharmonic. And audio says, So, captions, they often provide not only inaccurate information, but very embarrassing one. And the last one, example. This is a random cartoon. It's a cartoon for children. The audio says, So, what I want to say is that hearing disabilities are very frequently overlooked because of its invisible nature. So, this kind of disability, nowadays, it's easy to accommodate. So, hearing loss is a process that can start at any age. And sometimes, it can be a rapid process. It's far more common than people think. So, creating an accessible content and accessible world should be a common goal. Thank you so much for your attention. I think I will not be able to answer questions. If you have any questions, feel free to approach me. I will understand if you write me notes instead of captions. Here's my contact. If you have any questions, feel free to tweet or email me. I'm happy to answer them. Thank you. Thank you.