Hopefully you have taken all the needed steps to creating great videos, after you decided to start making web videos.  Some of your first steps should have been figuring out what you wanted to say on the video, how to say it and where you are going to film.

There may be one aspect of web videoing that you have overlooked.  When you are in the production and editing phase of a web video, do you ever think, “How will individuals who can’t hear well understand my video?”  More than likely, you have not thought about adding any type of hearing assistance aid to your web video.  Perhaps you did, and that is great, but many overlook this.

Because there is no regulation regarding putting captions onto your personal web video, you probably have not thought about adding captions.  However, this is a tragedy because there are currently over 20 million individuals who are hard of hearing.  And because of this, they may watch your video and not understand what you are saying or doing.  Many people do not add captions to their web video because it is hard work.  It is a long process to add captions.  But, if you are able to do it there are major benefits.  The main benefit is gaining a whole new following, which are the individuals who are hard of hearing.  This may be a large untapped market.

If you want to add captions to your web videos but don’t want to wait even more days to upload your video, there are options.  When you first complete your video, you upload it, whether this is to YouTube or your personal blog.  But, after you have finished your first version of the video, and it is running live, begin to add captions to the same video.  Since the video is already available for people to watch, you will not have to sacrifice viewers just because you want to add captions.  You can now take your time to add captions, and then when you are finished you can upload a second video for the hearing impaired.  This will not only grow your viewership, but it will show that you care about these millions of people who are hard of hearing.  People will genuinely be impressed.

If you are apprehensive about adding captions because you fear you will not know how or you just don’t want to take the time, than you can use a service to add the captions for you.  There is one company called dotsub at http://dotsub.com/ that will transcribe and add captions to your personal videos.  This is excellent if you have a popular video blog, and you want to make it accessible to people who are hard of hearing.  When you find yourself in this position, you can submit your video to this company, and they will do all the work for you.  One of the best features about this company is the fact that they can transcribe and add captions to your video in a multitude of different languages.  So, if you have an international audience, they are more than able to understand what your video is telling them.

Don’t be afraid to tackle the job of adding captions to your web videos.  You can reach millions of more customers or fans, help others in need and increase your viewership substantially.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Using Video & Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.