Video Production
AudioEye wanted to find better ways to tell compelling stories through video. For over three years, I partnered with a good friend and collaborator, Grant Lemons, to create a large library of videos. Through the process, we learned so much about how to make videos accessible for people with disabilities.
Goals
Tell stories about the accessibility industry
Ensure every video is accessible for people with disabilities
Establish a style guide and templates for series
Opportunity
There's a lack of awareness about digital accessibility
How do you create high-quality video content during the pandemic?
How do you ensure videos are accessible for all
Research
We spent a lot of time researching the W3C guidelines for audio and video content. We also held interviews with end-users with visual impairments and hearing impairments from AudioEye's disability community called the A11iance Team to gather insights on features required. We also researched different tools that would enable us to achieve our high standard of accessibility.
Ideation
All of our projects start out in Google Docs. We start with outlining what we think the story arc should be for the videos—sometimes even including rough drafts of the script. From there, we take things into Figma where we storyboard the visuals. If we're working with footage, we usually just create intro and outro bumpers and a lower-thirds treatment. If we are working on an animation-based video, we'll map out each interaction and illustration expected paths.
Execution
I owned scriptwriting, storyboarding, creation of all illustrations, directing during the productions, and supported during post-production on animations and edits. Below are a few videos we created.
Our first video we created together (2021) to share a high-level overview of the company.
Our first animation-only video. I storyboarded the full video, wrote the script, and design majority of the assets. We also had a custom score made and had an internal team member do the voice over.
Our first product demo of how to get started with AudioEye and what to expect from the product. We've continued to update this as the product improves.
An overview of the AudioEye partner program when we shifted focus on indirect sales in 2022.
A detailed overview of AudioEye's hybrid approach. After we wrote a data-driven white paper about how we approach accessibility, we created this video version of the content.
In an effort to gain more interest for talent acquisition purposes, we created a video sharing a few reasons why our team loves to work at AudioEye.
An example of a campaign we ran on showing the top accessibility mistakes websites have and how they actually affect people who use assistive technology (AT).
Results
Our videos are made accessible with hand-written closed captions and audio description versions. We have received praise from our A11iance community for producing accessible videos and making it more of a baseline expectation for all marketing video content.
We grew our subscriber numbers from zero to 648 gaining videos nearing the tens of thousands, produced a full year of webinars, launched the company's first video-podcast series, and more!
Reflection
Lessons learned:
Automated closed captions can only get you so far. You have to manually review every caption.
Always include an SRT file for closed captions.
Always include a transcript.
Include the speakers name within captions if they are not visible on screen.
Always try to do a self-description for those who are visually impaired.
Include an audio description version that describes things happening on screen that aren't audible.
Use open captions on social cut videos.
"Nothing about us without us" which means don't create content about the Disability community without including them, or better yet, having them drive the project.