Why should you add boring captions?

Cheerful senior mother and adult daughter using smartphone together, sitting on a bench at a park

Cheerful senior mother and adult daughter using smartphone together, sitting on a bench at a park. Accessible captions by Subcap.

Captions play a vital role in making video content accessible to a wider audience, but unfortunately, many captions still fall short in terms of accessibility. In this blog post, we revisit the crucial topic of accessible captions, discuss Subcap’s commitment to accessibility over flashy features, and highlight Meryl Evans’ tweet and video on the importance of proper captioning.

Why Accessibility Matters:

Inaccessible captions create barriers for individuals with hearing impairments and those who rely on captions to understand video content. By focusing on accessibility, you help provide equal access to information and entertainment for all viewers.

Subcap’s Commitment to Accessibility:

Subcap is dedicated to supporting accessible captions. While some users may suggest animations or karaoke-style captions, Subcap prioritizes accessibility over these flashy features to ensure that captions are easy to read and understand by all viewers.

 

Meryl Evans, a deaf professional and advocate for accessibility, shared her thoughts on the importance of proper captioning in a tweet and video:

“Captioning should be more than just an afterthought. Quality captions make a world of difference for deaf and hard of hearing people like me. Let’s work towards making captions more accessible for everyone. #AccessibilityMatters”

In her video, Meryl talks about Hormozi captions, emphasizing the significance of accurate and timely captions for better understanding. She says “The best captions are boring. They let the video be the star.”

 

Best Practices for Captioning Videos for Accessibility with Subcap:
  1. Customize for Readability:

Subcap allows you to tailor the font, size, and color of your captions to ensure they are easily readable by all viewers.

  1. Choose a Clear Font:

Select a simple and easy-to-read font. Avoid using decorative or intricate fonts that may be difficult for some viewers to decipher.

  1. Keep it Plain and Readable:

Ensure your captions are presented in a clean and clear format that is easy for viewers to follow and understand.

  1. Subtitles in Blocks:

Display subtitles in blocks or phrases, rather than one word at a time, to improve readability and comprehension.

  1. Mixed Case Letters:

Use mixed case letters instead of all uppercase letters for a more comfortable reading experience.

  1. Punctuate and Capitalize Properly:

Proper punctuation and capitalization help viewers understand the flow and meaning of the dialogue. Include commas, periods, and other punctuation marks where appropriate.

  1. Use Clear and Concise Language:

When captioning your video, avoid using jargon, abbreviations, or acronyms that may be confusing for some viewers. Opt for clear and concise language that is easily understood by all.

  1. Synchronize the Captions:

Ensure that your captions are synchronized with the audio, allowing viewers to follow along easily. Captions that lag behind or run ahead of the audio can make it difficult for viewers to comprehend the content.

  1. Include Non-Speech Elements:

Caption relevant non-speech elements such as music, sound effects, and background noises that contribute to the context or atmosphere of the video.

 

By focusing on accessibility, you can make a significant difference in the viewing experience for all users, including those with hearing impairments. Embrace Subcap’s commitment to accessible captions and follow these best practices to ensure your video content is both engaging and inclusive.

If you like to read our previous blog post about this, here:

The Best Way to Caption Videos for Accessibility

How to highlight or customize word by word

Now it’s easy to customize each word on Subcap.

Firstly, select the word by double tapping on the word.

There are a pallet icon for font color, Aa icon for outline color and a highlighter pen, Italics, Underline and Overline icons for you to customize your font.

Please check our video below to see how to do customize your font as you like.

 

 

 

 

 

10 Apps that Every Content Creator Should Know

Whether you are a content creator or just a regular social media user, creating content and dealing with social media every day can be tiring. It also takes so much time and effort. And let’s admit that the content we see on social media has become a little too familiar.

Thankfully, there are a bunch of tools out there to make content creation easier for us all. So we are here to share 10 apps for you to stand out from the crowd and have the best content for your followers.

1. Evernote

Evernote for content creators

Evernote has everything you need to organize your life. Great notetaking, project planning, and an easy way to find what you need, when you need it. 

With Evernote, you can work anywhere, remember everything, find things fast and get things done easily. All of this allows you to create entirely new types of content, meaningful and informative.

 

2. Buffer

buffer for content creators

Buffer is a platform where you can manage different social media channels. For each social media account, you can manage post scheduling, view the direct messages you receive and generate reports.

With the Buffer App, you can regularly follow the posts you will make on social media, set the time of your posts with the timer feature and see how much interaction your posts get.

 

3. Subcap

Sunbcap for content creators

We all know that most people don’t watch videos with the sound on, therefore adding subtitles in videos is a must.

Subcap is an automatic subtitle app for your videos. It’s easy to use, simple but brilliant. Its speech-to-text engine is the best on the market which transcribes your words accurately in 125 languages. You can use it for all social media videos.

Putting subtitles on your videos increases your engagement and makes your content reach more people. It also makes your videos accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing.

 

4. Canva

Canva for designs

Canva helps you create professional designs and graphics. You can edit photos, add text, elements, stickers, frames and more. There are also more than hundreds of professional templates that you can customize to suit your needs.

 

5. Snapseed

Snapseed for content creators

Snapseed is one of the very useful photo editing apps, only available for mobile devices. Snapseed allows you to edit your photos to improve their aesthetic quality. You can then save, share, and export your final edited photo.

Snapseed’s photo editing tools come pretty close to some of the features found in the professional and often costly image editors.

 

6. Splice

Splice for videos

GoPro’s Splice is a free video editing application that works on iPhone and iPad. It’s a powerful video editor with a lot of features such as trimming, cropping, effects, transitions, titles, speed controls, animations, and more. It even has a library of free music and sound effects.

 

7. All Hashtag

All Hashtag for content creators

All Hashtag is a hashtag generator for Instagram, Twitter, and other social media networks. You must enter a term to get hashtag recommendations that are relevant to that word.

This program will produce and evaluate thousands of relevant hashtags for you to copy and paste into your social media posts. This can help you increase the reach of your content and the visibility of your business on social media.

 

8. LifeLapse

Life Lapse for content creators

LifeLapse is a stop motion app with all the tools you need to record and edit stop motion animations. You can import photos and use the app’s video editing tools to adjust frame rates, apply visual effects, and create soundtracks from royalty-free songs.

If you don’t know anything about stop motion videos, don’t worry. LifeLapse developers have created in-app academy to help you learn how to create stop motion videos.

 

9. Grammarly

Grammarly for content creators

Grammarly scans a text you’ve written and checks for any errors. The free version covers the basics (grammar, punctuation, and spelling) but the premium version goes a step further by providing stylistic and best writing practice recommendations.

It helps users write error-free content on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and almost anywhere else.

 

10. Typeform

Typeform for content creators

Doing surveys is a great way to prompt engagement on social media. Typeform is an easy-to-use quiz, form, and survey builder that allows you to ask your audience questions in a variety of formats, including image-based, multi-choice, short answers, yes or no.

Once your quiz is ready, you can share it on social media platforms or share the link.