Welcome

- Hi, my name's Rich Harrington and welcome to this course where we're gonna explore how to make video and audio more discoverable. We'll be focusing primarily on accessibility issues, making sure that people who have vision and hearing impairments are able to consume content to learn, benefit, and enjoy it. But this also has some other benefits for things like search engines. You see, when there are transcripts attached to videos, they really get favored in search results. This is because that two-hour conference suddenly has tons of data about it. Rather than just the short description you put up to a site like YouTube, all of the words that were said by the speakers suddenly become indexable and relevant. So, even if you don't care, although I hope you would, about reaching a broader audience, this is gonna help you reach a bigger audience. Now, in this course, we have a lot of things to cover and it's organized into very clear sections, including things about the nature of accessible video and audio as well as some of the technical aspects. We'll be covering things, for example, such as, what does accessibility mean? So you understand the different aspects of making content more accessible. This makes sure you are accommodating for things like visual and auditory impairments as well as other potential things that can make it difficult for people to access content, such as the type of video player that you use. We'll also talk about scripts and transcripts. If you've already got content scripted or you send it out for a transcript, how can you take that content and use it? This'll make it a bit easier to actually sync everything up. And we'll address things such as making the visuals better for those who have a visual impairment. How can we improve the legibility of content? What about things like audio description? Then we'll talk about an auditory impairment, such as hard of hearing or deaf. Once you understand some of the concepts as well as the goals, we'll take a look at specific technologies to help you with this. We'll explore two popular video editing tools as well as a third-party piece of software. We'll start by looking at Adobe Premiere Pro and some of its built-in tools for captioning. Then we'll take a look at Transcriptive from Digital Anarchy. It's one of the many products on the market to help you with audio transcripts and caption generation. And then we'll take a look at the recently released captioning tools inside of Final Cut Pro 10. Once we've explored the different video editing tools, we'll then turn to social media and video sharing platforms. I'll walk you through specific advice for each platform and show you how to take advantage of captions and other features to improve accessibility. Now, accessible video is important to me, so one of the main reasons why I got involved with content was to help reach broader audiences, and my own family has ties to the deaf community. For me, it's important that content can be accessible. Now, fortunately, things like YouTube and others improve this by making auto-generated transcripts or captions available. And while this isn't perfect, it helps. Unfortunately, the cost associated with accessible video has often been a barrier, but depending upon where you work and who you work for, it may actually be a requirement that you provide these, so it's important that you understand the technology and what's involved. Now, before we go forward, let me just give you a quick, brief background of myself. My name's Rich Harrington and I've made most of my life as a visual storyteller. I started as a journalist and then quickly moved into online content. Through the years, I've put together 40 published books as well as more than 150 video courses. I regularly publish content to Photofocus, which is a site about photography. Helping people be inspired and improve their creativity. And I own a media production company. We regularly have to produce content that is accessible and work for both companies and government agencies that require accessible content. Through the years, we've worked on a wide range of pieces for many different non-profits, Fortune 500, and other companies. This has allowed me to see a variety of budgets and many different techniques employed to improve accessibility. And in the 20 plus years that I've worked in the media and broadcasting world, I've seen a lot of changes, from open captions to emerging trends with web video. Fortunately, I also get a chance to work with a lot of different broadcasters, so I'm quite up to date on some of the requirements that are needed and will address those from the point of view if you are working for a broadcast company or with a company affiliated with government agencies, both state and federal. Now, the rules do vary from country to country and the exact requirements that you'll have to follow will be the sort of thing that you'll want to check with your own local rules, but what I'll share with you are best practices and techniques that can be applied globally. Remember, there really are two parties that benefit from more accessible video. You benefit in that you can reach more people. Folks who are not able to enjoy the content also benefit because now they can really learn, be entertained, or be inspired by all of your hard work. Accessible video means a broader audience and that more people can benefit from the content that's been created. If possible, I would encourage you to employ these techniques on every production, but in some cases, it may be a requirement by law, so being knowledgeable about the subject is both beneficial and often required.