Can your show be enjoyed by someone who is hearing-impaired?

I’ve done closed-captioning for Vampire Mob and currently there’s one free way to do it, YouTube.

There was a blog from Jamie Berke who contacted me asking why my show didn’t have closed-captioning for the hearing impaired. Part of the reason, I’m one guy and the other part was that I didn’t know how to do it.

I posted on Twitter and @J_Stille volunteered to help compare the scripts with what was on screen, tweak the dialogue and insert the sounds that would also be included on screen.

Here’s some explanation - http://www.youtube.com/t/captions_about.

If you go to “Captions and Subtitles” on YouTube for one of your videos, you will find a ‘machine transcription’ listed - click on download and you will have a file on your desktop that has time code. It also has a lot of inaccurate guesses as to what your dialogue is, but you can replace it and tweak time code to move the subtitles to where you want them to appear on screen.

Open that downloaded file in TextEdit on a Mac or a simple text editor on a PC to make the changes.

I open the file I downloaded, open Youtube, go to the page “Captions and Subtitles” and double-click on ‘machine transcription.’ You will see the time code and the subtitles that YouTube’s machine transcription service generated in action as the video plays.

I compare the text file I downloaded with how it looks playing on YouTube and that’s where the work starts. You enter the lines from your script and after a while you can start to get a feel for moving the time code. It’s really quick to remove a file and upload a new closed-caption file to see if what you’re typing will work with the video the way you want it.

The other thing you end up with is a file that has all your dialogue in English with timecode, which means that file could be translated into another language.

Including as many people as possible in your audience is never a bad thing.

Thanks to fans of Vampire Mob, we have episode one available in French (thanks to @wordofwyrd) and German and episode two is also available with German subtitles (thanks to @amon_gwareth).

Does anyone else know if other sites support closed-captioning? I know Blip.tv does not, but is working on it.

There’s really no excuse not to have your show up on YouTube and closed-captioned. If you want an audience, there’s one who can’t hear your sweet audio, but wants to be included. Take the time to do it.

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worldofhiglet reblogged this from vampiremob and added:

hear Blip.tv are working...this. I wonder if a workaround
kuriadalmatia reblogged this from vampiremob and added:

adding closed-captions! I’ll...what I’ve missed! As someone who is hearing impaired,...
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