Benefits of accessible videos

Accessible videos can be used by disabled people, have improved usability generally, and are more likely to appear in search results.

Essential for disabled people

Accessible videos ensure that disabled people can access the content and are not excluded from the information in the video. This is essential for people with:

• hearing impairments
• visual impairments
• cognitive impairments
• learning or intellectual disabilities
• an auditory processing disorder
• vestibular and seizure disorders.

To learn about assistive technologies and how people use them see the Knowledge Area: Assistive technologies.

Useful to everyone

Accessible videos make video content more accessible to everyone, not just disabled people. For example, captions and transcripts are useful to people who:

• have problems streaming the video
• want to watch the content silently
• prefer to scan the content rather than watch the entire video
• are not native speakers of the language spoken in the video.

Improves usability and search engine optimisation (SEO)

Including a descriptive text transcript makes the important topics and keywords in the video easier and faster to find, scan and listen to, enabling video content to be:

• indexed by search engines
• searched by end users
• translated into a foreign language (creating a transcript is the first step)
• played out loud to people using assistive technology at a rate much faster than most humans speak — in the same way a sighted and hearing person might watch and listen to a video at a faster playback speed.