There's a lot of work that goes in to organizing a successful webinar with many factors to take in to consideration to ensure that the viewers are left feeling satisfied. But one factor that often goes unconsidered is accessibility, and in particular, live captioning. Check out our list of 7 reasons you should live caption your webinar.
1. Accessibility
If you have any viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, they’ll often struggle to hear what the speakers are saying if they don't have access to live captions. And if these attendees don’t know what is being said, they won’t bother watching the webinar. With 1 in 6 people being affected by some degree of hearing loss, it’s important to accommodate these viewers just as much as your hearing viewers, so that everyone can access the information in your webinar.
2. "What Did They Just Say?"
Have you ever been in the cinema or at the theatre and turned to the person next to you for clarification of what has just been said? It’s easy to miss what someone has said, and live captions give viewers a second chance by allowing them to read what has just been said on screen.
3. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Do you need to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0)? The WCAG 2.0 are a set of guidelines for creating accessible website content published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The guidelines cover a range of areas that, when complied with, make your content more user friendly, as well as accessible, to people with disabilities, including people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Closed captions and live captioning are both great options to assist with compliance with the guidelines.
4. Language Comprehension
If you’ve tried to learn another language, you’ll know how difficult it can be to pick up every word that someone is saying, often needing to hear a sentence for a second time to fully comprehend it. If any person watching the webinar has English as a second language, live captions help improve comprehension and reduce anxiety.
5. Transcripts
As live captions turn speech into text in real time, a transcript is created containing all dialogue that has been captioned. After the webinar, this transcript is then yours to own. You can make this available to whoever you choose. If you’re envisioning to have the webinar recorded and remain online for people to watch, you can even utilise the transcript to create closed captions. It’s up to you!
6. Increased Target Market
As mentioned before, one in six people are affected by some degree of hearing loss. In Australia 3.9 million people speak a language other than English at home, and in the UK 4.2 million people use a language other than English as their main language. This means that by making your webinar accessible to people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have English as an additional language, you’re making it more attractive to many more potential viewers and clients.
7. Inclusion
Providing a service to your viewers that allows inclusion for everyone not only creates an accessible webinar, but it provides a greater level of respect for your brand.
Interested in getting your webinar live captioned?
