Five Huge Mistakes
that Destroy Video Accessibility

At Capital Captions, we always recommend using professional closed captioning, audio description, and British Sign Language (BSL) services to ensure accuracy, consistency, and compliance with accessibility standards. Professional quality captions, AD and in-vision sign language services should be of a standard that guarantees your content is accessible to a wider audience, including people who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or have low vision. Utilising DIY style video accessibility add-ons can result in errors, omissions, or poor quality that can both alienate viewers and damage your company’s reputation. Invest in professional accessibility services in order to enhance your audience’s viewing experience and ensure inclusivity for diverse audiences. 

In this blog, I’m going to cover five critical errors that are often made when scrimping on video accessibility services and which adds up to making video accessibility mistakes. 

Subtitles running too fast to be accessible!

Subtitles can be defined as translated or transcribed text which is timed to appear at the bottom of a screen of a video. With this definition in mind, it’s easy for a layman to assume that typing out dialogue word-for-word and auto-timing subtitles to fit is all that’s required in subtitling a video. In theory, this makes sense – in practice, it makes for terrible subtitles!

Whilst the aim of subtitles and closed captions can be to include all dialogue, exactly as it’s said, that’s not often the case in practice. People speak much faster than they read. In TV shows, people often speak faster than in real life (a side effect of memorising lines and not having to think about what you’re actually saying!). There may also be overspeaking or quick successive changes between speakers that are difficult to convey within a limited time. When languages are translated, especially into wordy languages like German, reading time can become even more of an issue. The truth is, when subtitles include too much verbatim dialogue, they can run so fast that they effectively become unreadable.

Recommended reading speeds for adults are <250wpm and for children, even less at <180wpm. Broadcast and indeed, professional streaming service guidelines will often require compliance with these speed limits. 

Badly Written, Distracting Over-Descriptions and Unnecessary Lyrics 

The intention of closed captioning for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing is to provide not only a timed transcription of dialogue, but also to include elements of the audio that help convey the tone and overall context of what’s going on. Bearing this in mind, badly written sound descriptions (although occasionally amusing), can literally destroy the viewing experience.

It’s not only inappropriate word choices on sound effects, however, that can destroy the mood of a show. Sometimes caption guidelines actually serve to make it worse. The big rule on soundtracks to shows is if there are lyrics, they should be included in the captions. However, especially when music comes between dialogue, random, ridiculous song lyrics can confuse viewers and leave them frustrated with the captions. This is incredibly prevalent in shows like ‘The Rookie’, where dialogue is interspersed with needless lyrics. Sometimes it’s better to describe the mood of the music, rather than transcribing a whole song! 

Bad Dress Sense and Sloppy BSL Editing Choices 

Whilst this one may sound amusing, it’s actually a huge issue. Editing in-vision sign language interpreting means shrinking a video and adding in a coloured background. The interpreter needs to contrast against that background, so using the same background colour as the interpreter’s sweatshirt is out of the question. Additionally, using beige colours is a big no-no, as it doesn’t contrast enough against hands (which are massively important to see properly). It’s also recommended to avoid any busy patterns on clothing, for the same reasons.

Professional editing is really important as well in terms of creating a fit-for-purpose BSL or ASL video. If there is onscreen text in the video that is being interpreted, it’s important to ensure that the interpreter doesn’t obscure that text. Also, some words and phrases require more broad signing than others, and tones of anger and/or excitement can mean bigger arm gestures. High quality, professional sign language editing means making sure that the interpreters hands are always onscreen to be interpreted, no matter how big the gesture! 

Word Wars and Audio Levels 

Professional audio description services are becoming increasingly popular as an option to ensure video accessibility for the blind and visually impaired. Audio description involves writing a script to describe visual elements of a video and narrating that audio track to fit in between dialogue. And that’s where the first problem comes in.

Shoddy audio descriptions can overlap narration with the dialogue which already exists in a video. Not only does this make it hard to hear what the description is telling us; it also makes it near impossible to hear what the dialogue is either! It’s frustrating to say the least.

Similarly to overspeaking and audio clashes in AD, sound levels can present a major issue. The nature of audio description means that most narration comes in between dialogue – in places where the music on a video is often increased, or loud special effects are going on. It’s often the case that an audio describer will need to make a choice. Recommend to the producer that the AD version turns the sound of explosions and/or music down to accommodate the AD volume… or turn the AD volume up in what effectively becomes a war of, ‘Who can be the loudest!?’ Not an entirely solvable problem, but something that should be addressed more by film makers and accessibility professionals alike. 

The nonsense world of back-translation and a game of Chinese whispers.

Following on from the rise of Netflix and online streaming channels, a huge number of global TV shows, (think Squid Game, The Bridge and so many others) have become popular. The popularity of video content that is not English in source language can, however, present a unique problem – that of Chinese whispers. Many translation companies have very specific language pairs, often working from English to other languages, over others. This means that sometimes, translations will not be made directly from a source video, but rather from the translation, leading to a chain of greater inaccuracy in what is actually being said.

Similarly, at its worst, videos can end up being translated back into their original language using archive subtitle translations in English. This is the worst possible scenario and can (and does) happen regularly on very old films. For instance, for a film from the early 60s, it can be hard to locate a subtitle file. Let’s say the only file that can be found is in French. The sensible thing to do is create a new subtitle file from scratch, in English, but AI being what it is, all too often, that foreign subtitle file is being translated back into English. What this effectively means is that while the meaning of the words may be correct, the subtitles on a video are blatantly mismatched with the actual words of the actors. It’s infuriating to say the least. 

So there you have it, a look into five huge video accessibility mistakes that destroy accessibility. If you have a project that you would like captioned, dubbed or translated for accessibility purposes, then why not contact us today to see what we can offer you. Just click the button below.