3 Tips For Making Accessible Videos

Jenny Holt, Freelance Writer, wrote an awesome guest blog post for us on making your marketing video accessible. Enjoy:

Website accessibility is hugely important. Data shows that about one-fifth of the population is disabled, which means that if you fail to make your site accessible, you’ll be cutting out 20% of your traffic. The ways that you can make your site universally available vary and this post is going to focus on videos.

Video content keeps your website visitors engaged. Business leaders in the tech space have found that people spend 2.6 times longer on a page with video than one without. It is challenging to make your videos accessible to everyone because disabilities cover a wide range of impairments.

For example, if you include complex content it may never be appropriate for someone with specific neurological impairments. But there are simple things that you can do to make every video you present to the public accessible to a broader range of people. Here are three tips that are practical to implement.

1. Disable Autoplay

People with sight impairments use technology that reads all of the text on a website aloud to them as they browse. You might enable autoplay thinking that you’ll catch client’s attention on your site quickly. The downside is that you’ll be throwing off your blind customers.

The sound of the video will play over the text reader and cause a lot of confusion. Autoplay can also be hard for people who have cognitive impairments.

2. Provide Captions

Type in your captions or use a service that will do this for you. You can use free online resources such as:

• DotSub.com
• Amara.org
• Subtitle Horse

Youtube offers auto-captions, but the result is many misspelled words. Don’t use the auto-captions. Also, captions should be written in a text color that pops out against the video background and in a large font.

3. High Contrast

People with vision impairments have difficulty perceiving gradients in color tone. This means that your videos need to have high contrast. Your face should be well lit, and any text that you provide needs to have a high contrast level.

Video is a powerful marketing tool and can help you engage your audience. Instead of excluding a significant portion of the population, do what you can to include them. Use these three simple tips to make the next video you upload on your website accessible to a broader audience.

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