Featured article by Dan Radak, Independent Technology Author
In today’s world, there is a belief that people are reluctant towards reading and would rather prefer audio or visual formats instead. After all, they are more convenient, mobile-friendly and overall more stimulating. Nonetheless, many companies still insist on transcribing and captioning their video and audio materials. While, to some, this may be somewhat confusing, there are numerous great reasons why this is so. With this in mind, here are the top five reasons why transcribing and captioning matters even in the 2018 business world.
1.    Assistance to the deaf or hard of hearing viewers
One of the reasons that even business videos need to be transcribed and captioned are the deaf or hard of hearing members of your team. While these disabilities may pose a certain difficulty, they are in no way impairing one’s cognitive abilities, which means that these difficulties may affect even some of the most invaluable members of your team.
Apart from this, a large portion of your target audience may have this problem as well, which means that relying on the audio formatted message alone may restrict your reach by quite a bit. This is particularly true in a situation where your primary demographic is baby boomers, seeing as how one-third of people aged between 65 and 74 have trouble hearing.
2.    Protection against the discrimination laws
In the previous section, we went to lengths to discuss why transcribing is important from a pragmatic standpoint, however, it can be invaluable when it comes to the legal issues as well. For instance, in a situation where you fail to provide a matching transcription and caption, you might become susceptible to certain disability discrimination accusations. Apart from being a nightmare from a legal standpoint, such a claim can also be considered a proper PR nightmare.
3.    Greater SEO value
Apart from legal and pragmatic advantages, transcribing and especially captioning your videos tends to bring a great SEO value to your content. First of all, both transcripts and captions make your content more search-friendly, therefore increasing its visibility which is, on its own, an SEO goal. Needless to say, the greater the visibility, the greater the traffic.
Aside from this, adding transcripts to video content significantly boosts its SEO value by optimizing it for further keyword searches. In this day and age, there is even an AI algorithm controlled video captioning service that can replace the need for constant (expensive) human input of data. This is particularly useful for those who work with huge quantities of video content.
4.    Saving space
One particular problem with saving data lies in the fact that it is quite space-consuming. Sure, in today’s world, you can just buy additional cloud storage space when you run out of it but this solution can be quite costly if you’re not careful. The problem with storing video and audio files lies in the fact that they are quite large in size.
By trying to reduce their default size, you will lower the quality of the recording, which will, in turn, render the material completely useless. Think about it, what good is an audio recording of a meeting or a customer complaint when you can’t discern most of the words uttered? On the other hand, saving a transcript is much more space-friendly and, therefore, a more frugal solution.
5.    Better comprehension
Have you ever asked yourself what is the point of English subtitles for movies that are in English, to begin with? The answer to this question might surprise you. You see, apart from helping out the above-mentioned people with hearing problems, having a transcript also helps with material comprehension. In fact, some people even find it easier to learn a language this way. Now, while this is important in movies, when it comes to the business world, flawless comprehension becomes paramount. A single missed word can become a million-dollar misunderstanding, which is more than enough explanation for why transcribing matters.
At the end of the day, the list goes on and on. For instance, you never know when you will need to review a video in a sound-sensitive environment or translate it into a foreign language (one more factor in which transcription is of an immense help). With all of these technological advancements and options for outsourcing these specialized business practices, there isn’t a single reason why all your business-related material shouldn’t be properly transcribed and captioned.
Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is currently working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and regular contributor to Technivorz.
