The Business Case for Closed Captions

Closed captions are no longer used only as an accessibility tool.

Though accessibility is one of their fantastic features, our online world is demonstrating that closed captions are now essential for all audiences – Deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing people alike.

Closed captions have been shown to increase engagement, information retention, and cater to the diverse lifestyles of your attendees and audiences. The transcripts captions produce can even boost your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

If you want your content, your meetings, and your events to succeed in today’s online environment, you need to be using captions.

Why Use Captions For Your Meetings

We’re holding and attending online meetings more than ever before. And even for those that are not working from home, we are often liaising with people in different regions and time zones. Captions can make these connections much easier, and get much more value out of them.

Increase engagement and productivity

Flexible working environments have been found to be more conducive to professional engagement, productivity and even revenue generation.

Flexible meetings – that can be attended on-the-go or while multitasking – are a huge part of creating this environment.

Captioning your online meetings – no matter which platform they are on – gives all your professional contacts and employees the freedom to engage with your meeting wherever they are, whatever they are doing. If they are commuting on public transport, or working in a noisy (or quiet) environment, they can still follow the meeting.

Boost information retention

Captions have been found to improve comprehension and information retention. By having a text-based version of the conversation or meeting, viewers are better able to commit the content to memory and reference the information later.

This is especially useful for any high-value meetings or those that require specific information to be recalled later.

Make your meeting accessible to everyone

Of course, one of the most important functions of closed captions is that they make your meeting accessible and inclusive. Captioning makes your meeting accessible for people who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing, and also those who are watching in their non-native language.

Why Use Captions For Your Content (including Events)

People consume content in a different way now than even several years ago. Companies including Facebook have publicised data showing that the majority of audiences watch videos with the sound off – in fact, the figure is 85 per cent!

Compete in the online environment

The main reason more people watch videos without sound now is because – just like in the meetings, above – they want their online content to be flexible.

We have busy lives, and a lot of different content competing for our attention! If a video or stream doesn’t have closed captions, it’s more difficult to access in different environments (for example, on a noisy train or in a quiet room).

This makes it easy to ignore, especially when your content is competing with other companies and media outlets who do caption their content. This is especially true for Deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences, many of whom simply do not have access to your content at all without captions.

If your video or stream does have captions, the audience can watch no matter where they are or what they’re doing – which is exactly what today’s viewers expect.

Reach more people and increase watch times

Because they make for more watchable content (as above), closed captions have been found to boost the number of people that engage with your online content.

They also increase the length of time that audiences watch for. 80 per cent of people are more likely to watch an entire video when captions are available, instead of just watching the beginning or skipping through. These longer viewing times help you get your entire message across, and they make your content perform better on search engines.

Maximize your SEO with transcripts

Transcripts are an inclusion product of captioning your content. They are made available at the end of the captioning process, if the captioning is done professionally.

One great advantage of having a transcript of your content is that it enables a video or stream to be found by search engines, including Google, through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Search engines can’t watch or listen to a video and index the content, but they do index text – transcripts. Therefore, whenever you caption, you should make your video transcript or highlights publicly available so you will rank higher, leading to more views and exposure for your content.

And here’s how easy it is!

We’re sure you can see the clear business benefits captioning your meetings and your online content.

Ai-Media covers it all! Whether you want captions for recorded video, live streams, Zoom meetings, broadcast, or anything else, we’ve got you. Visit Ai-Media’s website to learn all about our services covering captioning, translation and transcription.