Photo Credit: AudioEye.com
In this video, the caption almost makes no sense. It does not quite respect the speaker’s pauses and can cause any user who only relies on them to not fully grasp the information. This issue is very prevalent specifically in comedic/entertainment related videos. Just like the 1.2.4 Captions – Live (Level A) section states, making sure the text alternatives are accurate and accessible is essential. Youtube can and should invest more to improve captions to make it more accessible and useful to people in my user group.
For certain videos on Youtube, the captions often do not accurately detect specific sounds/other ambient noise. They simply defer to saying [music] or [Applause] when sometimes there is not even any applause. Several of the first-person accounts I found discuss the uselessness of automatic captions sometimes. One person states (and I paraphrase), “Many of these captions are purposeless and I personally don’t find them useful. “ I understand engineers are trying their best, but the sounds are not always described accurately, which makes this type of content very much inaccessible to auditory disabilities. I would also recommend youtube to not only train the models on human speech language, but also on other types of sounds that people with hearing impairments may need to detect.
Some individuals who are part of the deaf/hard of hearing community can speak to Youtube’s mic, if they feel like they are typing much, for example. However, if they don’t speak as clearly, the tool may not recognize their voice and search correctly. While this issue could be categorized in the speech category, it is still an issue that a few people with auditory disabilities face as well. Adding on to what the Appendix C to Part 1194 412.7 from article 508 suggests, I would recommend that Youtube also implements a sign language search bar that could greatly help the people in my user group.
Several youtube shorts that either contain regular short video content or advertisements to this day, do not always include captions. This picture is from an ad by native through a Youtube short. There is so much information given with barely any legible texts as an alternative. This violates many of the standards set for accessibility on social media, as found in the Appendix C to Part 1194 412.7Section from article 508 for example. I would suggest Youtube to require all ads and content creators to caption all of their contents, as a rule, to ensure that all of the shorts are also accessible to people with auditory disability.
Watching one of my first person accounts, “The Reality Of Life As A Deaf YouTuber” video, made me think about the struggles that content creators who are deaf face on the platform. I would recommend Youtube adding some assistive technology, (maybe some that could detect sign language） to allow them with editing/translating the captions. This not only would help them save time, but would also make their experience on the interface so much better.
Some may think that adding static big texts may help people with auditory disabilities. That is true, but not always. It is important to consider that some auditory impaired individuals do not speak English. Additionally, many people who are hearing impaired learn sign language as their first language and may struggle to understand written language to the fullest. I would recommend Youtube to follow the guidelines provided in the Appendix C to Part 1194 section from article section 508, to add sign language interpretation alternatives for the users.