How captions increase ROI and audience for media creators | Svetlana Kouznetsova | TEDxFultonStreet

Producers of video and live events all want a larger audience. One of the most cost-effective ways to increase audience size is to provide quality captions. This serves not only the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, but also the enormous fraction of viewers who are muted — including most content on facebook or on television in noisy venues. Svetlana Kouznetsova (Sveta) is a NYC-based user experience and accessibility consultant helping businesses make their products and services user-friendly and accessible to more people. Sveta works with business owners, media producers, corporations, educational institutions, event organizers. She has an MS in Internet Technology, several advanced certifications, and project experience with national/international organizations and non-profit/educational institutions. Sveta is also a founder of Audio Accessibility and provides consulting and training to businesses to help them improve quality captioning and other types of communication access to their audio, podcasts, videos, events in order to reach a wider audience. Sveta is an experienced speaker and author of a book, “Sound Is Not Enough: Captioning as Universal Design.” You can follow her on Twitter via @svknyc and @audio_a11y and check out her website for more information.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Interpreter: If you create
video and audio content

or host events,

there are two reasons
to care about providing

high quality, same language
captioning and transcription.

The first is obvious,

that there are millions
of people like myself,

who get accessibility through captions.

But another reason

is that you will reach
a much larger audience

and increase your return
on investment.

80% of people who use
captions are not deaf.

Captions help foreign language learners,

people in gyms, or bars,
or sound sensitive environments,

and assist when the speaker
has a strong accent,

or when content is complicated
and difficult to understand.

Captions increase
the viewership by 40%.

90% of videos with captions
are watched to completion.

Digiday states that

85% of Facebook videos
are viewed in mute mode,

so captioning has become a necessity.

Growing up,
I didn't have captioning access

until I was in eighth grade.

That's when my dad brought home a box

called a captioning decoder.

We were amazed by this magic box

that made captions show up
on almost all the TV channels.

Now captioning support
is included in all TV models

and video players,

and there's no need
for external decoders anymore.

Captions are now not limited
even to TV and videos,

they can also be provided
in real-time

for breaking news, webinars, events,

classes, work meetings, and so on.

Once I was given access
to captioned material,

my life completely changed

and new worlds opened up for me.

But I'm not alone.

There are over 48 million
deaf and hard of hearing people

in United States.

And over 466 million worldwide.

The number is increasing
rapidly as well,

especially because the number
one cause of hearing loss now

is constant exposure to loud noises.

Captions also helped me master
English as my third language.

Even my parents,
who have perfect hearing,

love captions because English
is not their native language.

Quality is critical

when you're considering captions.

While there are now
many speech technologies

that can translate automatically

spoken words into captions,

they're often not accurate.

Many deaf people call them
"craptions".

(Laughter)

Under ideal conditions,

the accuracy rate is usually
somewhere between 80 and 90%.

And it gets even worse
with complex content,

or accents, background noise,

when speakers are speaking too fast,

or overlap each other.

And bad captions
are not better than nothing.

Garbled captions are hard to read.

And it's just like
listening to garbled audio.

Caption errors make it hard to understand

or retain any information.

Poor captions affect your SEO,
search engine optimization,

and decrease your CPM,
your clicks per mille,

for videos and your ROI,
return on investment.

Google is deaf like me

and doesn't like videos
with auto-captioning,

so it just does not index
those videos.

So Google penalizes producers

for turning on the auto-captions

instead of actually adding
proper captioning themselves.

Even if a machine could translate

every spoken word
to captions accurately,

it still cannot follow
certain quality guidelines.

For example, you may see
text exactly as it's heard,

for example this:

Lets eat grandma.

(Laughter)

Now, does that mean
that we should go ahead

and consume grandma,

or that we should dine with her?

It's not clear, right?

Now that's much better.

(Laughter)

So proper grammar
and punctuation are critical

for optimal experience
in reading captions.

Just like speech intonations are.

Quality guidelines are long and complex,

so I'm just sharing a few
basic tips with you today.

Transcripts and captions
need to be verbatim

They need to follow
proper grammatical rules,

include non-speech elements,

use upper and lower case letters,

have good font size and color contrast,

and translate profanity --

word for word,

assuming it's not bleeped out
in the audio.

Captions and transcripts
need to be completed

before you publish
or share videos and podcasts.

So everyone can enjoy them
at the same time.

And if you advertise in advance

that events will have real-time captions,

you will get a larger audience.

With advances in technologies,

it is much easier, faster,and cheaper

to create captions now
more than ever before.

For example,
YouTube offers a great free tool

to create and edit captions.

You can save and download
your captions as an SRT caption file

and import it onto Vimeo, Facebook,

or other video platforms

that offer captioning support.

Here's a short example.

So you can see how easy it is.

Yes, it's really easy.

And you can clean up
the auto captions if you like,

or you can create them from scratch.

Just please do not turn on
auto captions

and just leave them as is.

And please add video captions

on all platforms that you use,

and couple those captions
with transcripts for videos,

because those are useful
for people who cannot see the video

or that want to skim the information.

If your organization can do so,

consider hiring an experienced specialist

who is familiar with quality
standards and guidelines.

They can produce your captions
and transcripts faster

and make them look
more professional and easy to read.

The costs for transcripts and captions

vary from a dollar all the way
to $10 or $15 per minute.

And the rates really depend

on experience and the skills
of the vendor,

the audio quality,

the content complexity,
among other factors.

Low cost may result in bad quality.

Some vendors may use
auto-captioning themselves

or unskilled labor

that will result in low caption quality

and end up wasting your money.

Always review
the selected vendor's prior work

to assess the quality.

If you have budget limitations,

there are some creative ways
to find money

like asking sponsors to cover expenses.

I work with media producers,
corporations,

educational institutions,
business owners, event organizers,

and I help make their audio,
video, and events accessible

at a reasonable cost.

There's some guidance and information
along with my personal story

that can be found in my book.

If nobody asks for speech to text access,

that does not mean that there's no demand.

It needs to be provided
for all types of aural information

even without a prior request.

High quality, same language
captions and transcripts

are good for business

and a necessity for millions of people.

Let's think outside the ears!

(Laughter)

Let's caption everything!

Get your message to more people.

Thank you.

(Applause)