Videos are an important facet of the myriad entertainment options offered by the internet. They can offer hours of enjoyment for the typical web user; but are disabled users able to gain the full possible benefits of video portals such as YouTube?

The simple answer is no. Google, who purchased YouTube - the internet’s premier video sharing portal - back in 2006, is usually a great innovator of accessibility and aims to prevent discrimination on the web. But could YouTube be lagging behind when it comes to catering to users of varying abilities?

YouTube’s videos are not accessible to users of all abilities.

Example

Put yourself in the shoes of a deaf user. You would be able to watch the video, but can you take the full value from its contents? No.

This is where transcripts come into play. The W3C (World Wide Consortium) suggest in Technique G159 that if any video content is used within a page, an accessible alternative to the video presentation must be provided.

In order to make YouTube more accessible, it seems all the portal would need to do is allow a user to provide a transcript when posting a video. This simple addition to YouTube’s current video portal would allow many users to gain more from videos.

Working Example - have a look at a video posted on YouTube by bigmouthmedia staff : bigmouth christmas

Transcript

Doorbell rings
Door opens
A bunch of Carole signers appear
“We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christ, we wish you a merry Christmas, and a happy new year. To this world we bring, full search marketing, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.”
Door closes and glass smashes.

Not only would the simple transcript above make YouTube much more accessible, it would also aid YouTube’s organic results. This would happen because the content within the transcripts would be visible to search engines, while audio files wouldn’t. We all know that content is a key ranking factor, and the additional content that a transcript could provide would really elevate YouTube’s rankings.

Developments

YouTube has made slight developments to encourage users to provide video transcripts. In early March 2008, YouTube was made available via Google’s API, which meant users could efficiently embed the video content onto a page. If a transcript was then presented, a sprinkle of simple AJAX would enable a user to mark up parts of a transcript with a time relating to the video. The user could then click on a section of the transcript, which would take them directly to that timestamp within the video, rather than having to watch it all the way through.

How can Google further help accessibility within YouTube? Google is the webmasters favourite English language search engine. This is because Google has the ability to drive large amounts of qualified traffic to a website. Google currently allows users to create a XML video sitemap that contains specific information about a video. Google then uses this data to populate its video search feature. Within this XML video sitemap, there’s the ability to add additional data such as a description of the video or a landing page. This data is then used by Google to help them match search terms with videos.

If Google wanted to make YouTube accessible, they could update their current approach in XML video sitemaps and include an additional field for a transcript. The transcript, along with the description, could be used as the typical ranking factors of the video. This would not only increase the accessibility of the videos but the transcript would also provide far more information about a video than a limited description could.

In conclusion, Google’s YouTube currently has the power and the ability to increase the accessibility of their video portal, but have not taken advantage of all possibilities yet. Hopefully, the needs of users everywhere, whatever their abilities, will be a priority to all facets of internet development - from YouTube and Google to any number of other online applications.



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