Cheap digital cameras and easy podcasting software have made Spielberg and DJs of us all. While not everything produced is Oscar-worthy stuff, thousands of companies can now create decent quality media explaining products, services, ideas – or anything they choose.
But does that mean that your website needs no written content on its pages ever again? There are several very good reasons why you should consider marrying your video and audio content to written transcriptions. Not least because of this first reason:
It’s the law.
According to the UK’s Disabilities Discrimination Act, you must take reasonable steps to ensure your website design is accessible to disabled users. Granted, this is a bit of a grey area. For example, you can’t transcribe footage of a wordless animation. But you might be able to transcribe a video that explains your special offers or guides you through the site. Take a look at this short quote from the Act:
“For people with visual impairments, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include …accessible websites.”
It’s not too difficult to see how that could apply to offering written content for both hearing and visually impaired people (who use screen-reader software). Note that a similar law exists in America and most other Western territories.
It appeals to more people
Though many so-called web gurus like to claim that reading online is dead, it’s possibly in a healthier state that it has ever been. Many people simply prefer reading an article to watching a video.
Sometimes this is purely for practical reasons. For example, you can’t always listen or watch a video at work in a public office. Or it may take too long to download video to a mobile device. Some people may simply not have the right technology to listen to audio online.
The other aspect is that written content is easier to scan. You know within a few seconds whether the article you’ve landed on has the content you need by zipping through the text and subheads. That may not be so easy with a video. And who has the time to sit through a five minute video just in case it contains interesting stuff?
It’s better for SEO
Despite the oceans of video content online out there, written text still generally trumps video for basic search engine-friendliness. The same applies to audio files. While a search engine can index written content, it can’t understand other media so easily.
So, while transcribing your material has many other benefits for the user, this all reflects better on your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts. And good SEO usually equals increased website traffic.
Of course the legal reason alone should be enough to make you consider transcription. But the happy side-effects of making your content more accessible results in more visitors, more happy customers and – hopefully – more business.