In the Audience Development department, we like to grow audiences. We want people to know about your podcast and your message and we want your podcast to build community. So why would you want to leave anyone out? Especially when we have the tools to include them from the start.
In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day on May 16, we at Pacific Content wanted to give you some tools on how to make your audio more accessible. According to the WHO 1.3 billion people have a significant disability. Not all people with disabilities would find a typical podcasting experience to be a barrier, but for those who do, there are some things we can do for our productions that can make a difference.
In order to make your podcast more accessible, start with these three:
Transcripts and Captions
For those experiencing hearing loss, transcripts can make podcasts much easier (or even possible) to access. At Pacific Content, we have always encouraged our clients to add transcripts for each of their podcast episodes. That job just got a whole lot easier thanks to the new transcripts feature on Apple, where all podcasts on that platform have automatic transcriptions by design. The auto generated transcripts are included with each new podcast episode that is published on Apple, and we are told that over time Apple will transcribe the back catalogs of all podcasts. Spotify also has a transcription feature, but it is still rolling out so isn’t turned on for every podcast episode on the platform yet.
Being able to see a written copy of the script doesn’t only help those with hearing loss, but people learning a new language or who have audio processing disorders can also benefit from being able to read what is being said. For others, a transcript can help you follow along, or find a specific part of the show to listen to again. It also helps with SEO- now that the transcript is there, it’s searchable.
Thoughtful Sound Design
Knowing all of this, how do we design a podcast that will be better for people with hearing differences? When recording, think about your audio first: use quality recording equipment and record in rooms with limited background noise. Unless it is essential for the podcast topic, avoid having people speak over each other. That means if you have more than one host/guest, record on multiple channels so that if they do speak over each other, you can edit that out in a way that makes sense and makes it more clear for your listeners.
I asked Robyn Edgar and Mark Angly, co-managers of our sound design team, what techniques they use when sound designing with accessibility in mind. They told me the pre-production, production and post-production approaches needed to make a podcast better for people with hearing differences are generally the same things they would do for all podcasts: ensuring high quality recordings, making sure levels are consistent and balanced between foreground and background sounds, removing echoes and other technical problems while recording & mixing, and properly finalizing and publishing the final product to deliver it in the highest possible quality
An Accessible Website
We always recommend that our clients have a website for their podcast, and we have started recommending they think about how that website can be made more accessible. There are many ways to make your website easier to navigate for people with disabilities– including alt text for images, making sure it has keyboard navigation, and using colours that will show contrast even for people who experience colour blindness.
Learn About It
Seneca College in Toronto offers a micro-credit in Accessible Podcasting, and when I reached out to instructor Devin Andrade, she told me because the course focuses on considering accessibility at every step, and not thinking about it as an add-on at the end, it impacted the ideas and production plans she saw from her students.
“They were considering the accessibility of their guests and of their consumers in every decision they made. It wasn't just about the final product being accessible (ie. having transcripts, video versions, etc), it was about how accessible the actual content was in how it was presented and organized within an episode.”
It’s worth considering how an accessibility approach from the start could change the way you work on your podcast, and how the final product might be different.
A Note on True Accessibility and Diversity
While researching this post, a fellow PCCer said I should look up podcaster Michelle Macklem. Michelle did her Masters research on critical disability studies, and though we weren’t able to connect in person due to some gnarly time zone issues, she was kind enough to share with me the work of a few people who are focused on making a difference in this space.
I want to highlight this as one of the most important things you can do: know more. Understand someone else’s barriers, and then push them out of the way the best you can. Alice Wong’s “Manifesto” made me reconsider what it means to include someone who “sounds good;” Aimee Louw’s episode of The Conversation Piece made me thankful for the working ramps on my city’s transit system; and hearing Chancey Fleet on Spark forever changed how I feel about digital-only elevators (and has encouraged my new hobby of writing better alt-text.)
PLAYLIST
Inspired by this list of accessible podcasts, we put together a playlist of our own, with a few episodes from producers in the world.
Seen and Not Heard: A conversation with Tal Minear
Our brilliant sound designer Tal Minear joins Caroline for a discussion of the intricacies of creating a deaf soundscape, voices that defy filtering, and the wacky things we do to in the name of foley.
Talk Description To Me: AI Description Part 1
Love them or hate them, AI writing tools like ChatGPT have the potential to change the way we write, communicate, and learn. One group looking to harness the technology with, and for, the Blind community is Be My Eyes, an outfit which connects Blind and low-vision users with sighted volunteers through live video calls. Now, Be My Eyes has partnered with OpenAI to create Be My AI, a free app-based service that provides AI-generated descriptions of user photos.
And a couple more from our producers here at PCC:
How to Fix the Internet: Building a Tactile Internet
Blind and low-vision people have experienced remarkable gains in information literacy because of digital technologies, like being able to access an online library offering more than 1.2 million books that can be translated into text-to-speech or digital Braille. But it can be a lot harder to come by an accessible map of a neighborhood they want to visit, or any simple diagram, due to limited availability of tactile graphics equipment, design inaccessibility, and publishing practices.
Home.Made.: The Blind Surfer
As a teenager, Ling Pai had barely settled into her new home, in a new country, when she learned she was losing her sight. For years Ling resisted – even outright ignored – the implications of her diagnosis. She refused to ask anyone for help, and stubbornly pursued perfection with everything she did. A crisis in her 20s – when she found herself alone at home, far from friends and family – forced her to confront and accept her condition. It liberated her to take on new challenges, ones that required her to ask others for help. Challenges like downhill skiing. And competitive surfing. Adventures that brought new waves of friends, family, and more places to call home.
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