How the Media Industry Grapples With Audio Accessibility

While diversity, equity and inclusion has become a major topic of discussion among advertisers in the last two years, communities with disabilities, especially those with hearing impediments, are often left out of the conversation. Making audio content consumable for those who are deaf or hard of hearing is still “not very good,” according to TEDx speaker and accessibility expert Meryl Evans, due in part to a lack of decipherable transcripts. "[Podcasts] almost never have a transcript," Evans said. While it’s a growing priority—media companies like Crooked Media and Vox Media's branded content studio Vox Creative have introduced tech to accommodate deaf and hard-of-hearing people through visualizations, text and a way for brands to tap into the audience—there are still hurdles for consumers with disabilities to access media, particularly audio. According to Insider Intelligence and eMarketer, U.S. podcast ad spending will surpass $2 billion in 2023 and account for nearly one-third of digital audio ad spending by the end of 2026. Meanwhile, disabilities touch 73% of consumers, including people who know someone who's affected, according to disability insights firm Return on Disability. That means the disability market controls more than $13 trillion in disposable income globally. But to fully tap into that market, advertisers and publishers need to do more: chiefly, stop making deaf and hard-of-hearing communities an afterthought by utilizing sponsorships or partnerships with disability-friendly tech firms. Lost in translation Even when podcasts do have full transcripts, it can still be difficult to decipher them, Evans said. In most instances, podcasters provide transcripts or captions for a period of time then quietly phase them out because they realize it's too expensive or time-consuming, according to software developer and accessibility advocate Ben Myers. “If someone sends you a long email with no paragraphs, what would the reading experience be like?” Evans added. “The same thing applies to unformatted transcripts.” In a perfect world where every podcaster created transcripts of their content, platforms still might not be able to deploy them due to lacking the proper technology. “When [transcripts] go to any of the distribution outlets or platforms, does that platform have the capability to present the transcript or a way to upload it there?” said Donna Danielewski, executive director of accessibility at Boston public radio station GBH. “It isn’t just about a podcast creator ensuring that they can provide a transcript." Immersive transcripts funded by brands Last year, Vox Creative built immersive transcript tech for audiences to visualize podcast text on the media company’s site for its six-episode show More Than This, which was created in partnership with prepaid phone company Straight Talk Wireless. The catalyst for the project was the show’s first guest, Mandy Harvey, a music student who lost her hearing during college and questioned why she would be on a podcast she couldn't hear. “By manipulating typography, fonts and colors, More Than This was able to capture pacing, emphasis and emotion within the show’s transcript,” said Vox Creative executive producer of audio Annu Subramanian. Following that success, Vox Creative began offering a lower tier of immersive transcripts that are more static and applied it across all its productions, including Mattress Firm’s Are You Sleeping? and Ben & Jerry’s Into the Mix, the latter of which launched in February. Political media company Crooked Media, which has 300,000 YouTube subscribers, partnered with Adobe in June to use its artificial intelligence-powered speech-to-text tech. Adobe captions are provided for video interviews and ads on YouTube for its shows, including Pod Save America, Lovett or Leave It, Pod Save the World and Offline. Adobe's tech captures the speech embedded in the video and turns it into text, according to the media company. Adobe principal product marketing manager Meagan Keane said 10% of its monthly user base uses its speech-to-text captions, which are roughly 95% accurate. The company declined to share the size of its user base. New perspectives for a changing landscape Audio accessibility isn't just important to deaf and hard-of-hearing consumers. The holy grail for the industry is to reach beyond these audiences to others who may temporarily need access. Evans called this "the curb-cut effect" wherein a feature intended for a specific group of people becomes useful for a larger group. A report from captioning service company 3Play Media included Facebook's video advertising study, which found that captions increase view time for Facebook videos by 12%, which includes audiences who don't have hearing-related disabilities. “Captions were originally designed for deaf and hard of hearing … but many more people use captions, like parents with napping children,” Evans said. “We have to get it out of our heads that it's just for people with disabilities. … Accessibility is for everybody."

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