Why should you transcribe your videos? This question can be answered with many different answers. This article should give you an overview of the greatest benefits and give you an idea of what audio transcription is.
What is Audio Transcription?
Audio transcription has a long and varied history. In the past, audio transcription would be defined as the written record of human’s voice. For example public speeches or courtroom proceedings.
Nowadays the definition of audio transcription includes digital recordings as well. Audio transcription could cover a webinar, a movie or an interview. At the core audio transcription always will be the written version of an auditory experience.
Accessibility for Deaf or Hard of Hearing People
71% of people with disabilities leave a website immediately if it’s not accessible. Closed captions allow people with hearing disabilities to consume your video content and simultaneously increasing your audience. The time-synchronized text provides an alternative for 48 million Americans / 360 million people worldwide with hearing loss.
Helpful for Online Learning
Video transcription can be helpful for online learning. 52% of students found captions helpful as a learning aid by improving comprehension. Closed captions can enhance the experience for people whose native language is not English too. 66% of those students reported that they find captions “very” or “extremely” helpful. Captions allow them to read along as they listen. Video transcription can also help children improve their literacy.
Increased SEO
Search engines like Google can’t watch videos. Adding transcripts allows them to crawl the text of your audio or video content and properly index the site. The number of unique visitors through organic search results and the inbound links directly attributable to the transcript pages increases. YouTube videos with captions had 13.48% more views in the first two weeks, as compared to videos without captions.
Viewing in Sound-Sensitive Environments
Viewers can watch videos in places where audio is unavailable with closed captions on. These places can be noisy trains or crowded streets. Captions can be useful in quite environments like a library, office or the train too.
Video Search and User Experience
Video transcription makes your videos way more searchable. Viewers on your site can find the videos they are looking for. Users can search for keywords within the transcript. If there is a particular spot in the video a user wants to jump to, they only have to click the word. The user experience and overall customer satisfaction gets boosted.
Easy to handle
When you are doing a research for example, it can get quite difficult to track the information down from an audio or video file. Audio / video transcription allows to search for required keywords and copy & paste the passages from the transcription. Transcription is also a great way to store data.
Conclusion
Audio or video transcription has a great variety of benefits for everyone. It’s a great way to enhance the overall user experience and customer satisfaction. It’s a huge benefit for viewers with hearing disabilities and for students learning online and without English as their native language. On top audio / video transcription is helpful in online marketing in case of SEO. So everyone who includes video or audio material on their website should consider using the transcription.
