14 Principles of Accessible Design

There are a number of ways to make documentary media accessible.

One of these is to provide transcripts or subtitles, which not only makes the content of your media accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, but also makes it easier for audience members who prefer to read to consume your content.

To transcribe a video, you can do so manually by listening to it and typing what you hear, or you can edit transcripts automatically generated by transcription software. YouTube is one tool that you can use to generate transcripts. If you upload a video to YouTube, YouTube will, after some time, generate a transcript for speech corresponding to the language you have set as the video language when you uploaded the video. If you don’t want the video to be public, you can upload it as an unlisted or private video and then delete it once you have downloaded the transcript. You can also generate transcripts by using OpenAI’s Whisper software.

If you plan on creating captions, YouTube allows you to export transcripts in subtitle (.vtt) format, and you can edit these subtitle files using the open source program Subtitle Edit. You can also use the Amara platform to crowdsource the captioning process by allowing interested audience members to contribute captions.

For more resources on accessibility, you can check out the following links:

• • Designing Resilient Video Tutorials: Accessibility
  • UK Home Office: Designing accessible services: provides tips for making media accessible for low vision, D/deaf and hard of hearing, dyslexia, motor disabilities, users on the autistic spectrum and users of screen readers.
    • Posters describing principles of accessible design for different disabilities
  • W3.org: Making Audio and Video Media Accessible
    • Audio Content and Video Content
  • WCAG Guidelines
  • Principles of Accessible Design, Michael J. Young, Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD)
  • RGD AccessAbility Handbook
  • The Universal Design Network of Canada
  • Creating Accessible Transcripts or Captions for Video-Based Learning Resources
  • An Introduction to Accessibility, digital.gov
  • Video Captions, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.
  • https://podcast-accessibility.com/
  • https://pressbooks.com/accessibility/could-pressbooks-support-ebook-creation-for-deaf-education/