Accessibility and Video Composition

I think that making the world more accessible is a notion that is long overdue. The way that our society is run prioritizes the young, the able-bodied and heteronormative white men. This shows up in our architecture, the price of menstrual products, and many more. When it comes to video and accessibility, one option to making the video more accessible to those who may be hard of hearing is to include captions.

Personally, I’ve gotten to a point where I find it hard to hear what I’m watching unless closed captions are present. I am also visually impaired and have had to wear corrective lenses for the past 13 years of my life. With that in mind - it’s interesting that integrating accessibility into any content that I create is usually not at the forefront of my brain. The reality is that more likely than not, folks are not thinking about ways to make content more accessible. Usually, we are composing at a level of accessibility that is based from our own ability.

In my video I’m not entirely sure how I can increase accessibility. The genre I chose to compose in is experimental video and at this point in time, there is not any speaking that occurs. If at some point audio of speaking is included, I think including on screen captions would be very helpful. Alternatively, including interactive captions even if there are no words being spoken could mesh well with the experimental mode that was used. Experimenting with visual language rather than sonically is an interesting medium to explore.

Outside of closed captioning, I think a visual description of what is happening on screen may be helpful for those who are visually impaired and can not see the video. A visual description may enrich the video I’ve produced because writing out exactly what is occurring could draw attention to the specific details that were included in the creation of the video. I think if I call attention to the decisions that were made, it could make the symbolic/experimental meanings more clear to the viewer.