Do you find closed captions a little annoying or do you purposely enable them? Do you find them really helpful or even essential? That’s what we’re going to talk about today.
My name is Sam Pearce. I partner with Canada’s biggest brands to create incredible virtual events.
One of the things that make our events so good is that we offer the ability to add closed captioning. Now, initially, you might think that not many people use this closed caption service, maybe it’s a waste of money.
How many people do you think really click and enable closed captions? Yes, that’s right. They have to enable it themselves. This isn’t set by default. How many people do you think are really enabling those closed captions? You might be surprised. Based on their analytics, 14% of our viewers choose to enjoy the content with closed captions. Yeah, that’s right, 14%!
If you’re hosting an event with a couple hundred people, there’s about 30 people who are going to be looking for those closed captions whether they really need them to be able to access the content at all, whether they rely on them, or whether it’s just something that they like to have. A lot of people like to have those closed captions there so they can catch every single detail. They can read as well as listen to the audio. Adding closed captions really helps makes your online event inclusive to everybody.
There’s been a lot of these virtual events happening, and a very, very small percentage of them offer closed captions, which really leaves people feeling forgotten about if you rely on closed captions and that’s the only way that you can consume content. If your company’s hosting a virtual event and they forget about you, they don’t enable those closed captions, they don’t have that capability, understandably, you’re going to feel pretty left out.
On the flip side, if your company has gone above and beyond, paid a little bit extra and has the ability to add closed captions to the livestream, think about how amazing that is going to make you feel, knowing that your company has above and beyond to make the event truly accessible to everybody watching. I really think it’s worth it. We spent a ton of time, energy, money, investing in the R&D to make closed captions happen. Not an easy feat.
It’s getting easier and easier as platforms are integrating it as standard. But if you’re starting from scratch, it’s a little bit tricky. So if you don’t want to worry about the technical details, simply host your virtual event with us.
We’ll take care of all of the technical wizardry and deliver an event that absolutely everybody is able to enjoy, whether they’re listening to the audio or reading the closed captions.
