What’s the progress over perfection approach in accessibility? First, let’s get something out of the way. Often, people think accessibility is the web development or IT team’s job. Far from it. Accessibility is for everyone. It’s everyone’s responsibility, every department from human (HR) resources and marketing to finance and procurement has a part to play. … Read more
Here’s a round-up of short captioned topics and tips. These used to be in the giant captioned video guide. But it was becoming unwieldy and I wanted to take out instructions for software as that’s always changing. I also separated out the Captioning Videos FAQ. Captions Revealing Secrets Should captions reveal secrets? Sometimes the speaker … Read more
When it first hit, the pandemic was a curse. For everyone, of course. But I’m talking about it being a curse in a different way for me as a deaf person. You know. With a mask-mask here. And a mask-mask there. Here a mask, there a mask. Everywhere a mask-mask. Sorry. Got carried away there … Read more
When I give a presentation, I always preface it: “I can only share my experience as a deaf person because we’re all diverse.” We’re all different. Some of us are born deaf. Some are late-deafened. Some of us wear hearing devices. Some don’t. Some of us learn to speak and read lips. Some of us … Read more
UPDATE on November 8, 2021: Peloton has subtitles for its live classes. Out of the blue, I received multiple messages pointing to an article on TMZ about an accessibility lawsuit. It had a sensationalist headline: “Peloton Sued: Deaf Folks Need More Guidance!!!” Before I opened the article, I could feel myself getting riled up for … Read more
If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s this: prepare for the unexpected. No company can think of every possible scenario that will happen. One of the first things to do is to create a process. There’s always going to be a need for a process or making a change to one. And believe … Read more
2026 Update: Automatic captioning has changed dramatically since this post was first published in 2020. Several tools listed below no longer exist or have been replaced. I’ve added quick notes throughout to help you choose current options. Discovering a way to do video captioned calls A client sent an invitation to a friendly lunch video … Read more
We have a new problem with videos. It’s a good problem to have. With more do-it-yourself captioning apps on the market, more people are captioning their videos. However, the options they select for their captions don’t always follow best practices and affect the user experience. When you watch captions for decades, you learn what works … Read more
With the growing number of tools for captioning videos making do-it-yourself captions possible, so is the growing number of captioned videos with crappy captions. Sometimes people don’t realize the importance of something until they see a good and bad example side-by-side. This series of side-by-side videos tell the story of why each rule of awesome … Read more
Born profoundly deaf, I’ve depended on captioned videos since getting my first big clunky decoder in 1983. It was a box about the size of the older VHS and DVD players. Back then, captioned shows and movies were hard to find. Few things excited me more than seeing the caption symbol on the cover of … Read more