The issue of disability came to the horizon as a matter of serious human rights issue for the first time after the first report on “Disability” by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2011 and its introduction in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The report starts with a foreword given by the phenomenal physicist that contributed to the world of theoretical physics in splendid ways: Professor Stephen Hawking.
“Disability need not be an obstacle to success. I have had motor neuron disease for practically all my adult life. Yet it has not prevented me from having a prominent career in astrophysics and a happy family life,” Hawking said.
He mentions how his team of personal assistants made it possible for him to live a life of comfort and dignity.
Today there are laws where the digital world has to ensure that their content is available for disabled people, non-conformity to which can lead to a breach of the law, making them liable to be held guilty and punishable by law. The U.K.'s Equality Act of 2010 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which went revisions many times after its first representation, are clear examples of that.
In the United States alone, 61 million people live with some form of disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It becomes our moral duty and not just an obligation to fulfill in terms of serving and producing content in a way that will make it easy for people with special needs to understand and enjoy the content as much as anyone else.
How to make content disabled-friendly?
Modifying websites to generating video content with minor adjustments can do wonders. Not only do you make your content more accessible to the needs of differently-abled people, but you also increase your reach to that 15 percent of the global population that otherwise would ignore or let go of your content due to inaccessibility.
Five simple ways can help you to improvise your content and make it disabled-friendly:
- Subtitle your videos: A study has revealed that over 90 percent of people prefer to watch videos on their phone with the sound off. Not only this, subtitling helps in user engagement and in accelerating views considerably by making the content available for non-native speakers, people night binging on videos trying to not awake their partners, and people suffering from some form of hearing disability.
- Transcribe your audio and video content: You must transcribe your audio and video content based on your targeted audience. Adding transcription to video and audio content help in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as your content gets indexed more quickly by different search engine bots and makes content accessible to people who have hearing disabilities. About 2 billion people globally can speak English, making English the third largest language in the world. Transcribing content to English, apart from other languages, will help you accelerate your global reach.
- Dubbing content can help over 2 billion visually impaired people globally: According to World Health Organization (WHO), 2.2 billion people worldwide have near or distance vision impairment. Though dubbing has been criticized for years as many say it takes away the essence originality of video content, the fact remains that dubbing makes it easier for people who are non-natives or are visually disabled to enjoy the content.
- Text to Speech! Make your websites audible: Text to Speech (TTS) reader can help convert any webpage, email, or any written piece of content such as short stories, poetry, and the like to audio. A person can listen and understand what the content is offering. As dubbing or voice-over cannot be possible for every little written piece of content, TTS reader software makes the job pretty easier in that regard.
- Translation is the key in the multicultural world we live in: Beyond a doubt, translation helps in attaining global reach significantly. By translating your content, you allow people of multiple backgrounds to enjoy your content, make it easy for people with special needs to understand your content and increase the chances for your content to be viewed massively. It's a win-win situation to cut it short!
If you are ready to widen your global reach, Ollang is here at your doorstep! Explore our packages to know more about our translation services.