Accessible videos for everyone as easily as possible

How can you make information from a video accessible to everyone? You can do that by providing the video with audio description and text alternative in addition to subtitles. But how does that work and can you do it yourself?

Marc van Tintelen, product owner SIMsite powered by Drupal: "We want to support our customers as much as possible in making their content accessible. We feel it is our duty to contribute as much as possible to 'barrier-free' government websites. They indicated that a major challenge was making videos accessible. I started looking for ways to make it easier and found them at Scribit.pro."

What is Scribit.pro?

Scribit.pro specializes in making videos accessible so that everyone can get the most out of them. It offers easy-to-use software to provide videos with subtitles, audio description and a text version. For voice, ReadSpeaker is used. The three components are necessary for your video to meet accessibility requirements according to the Digital Government Decree. In addition, Scribit.pro provides you with code to place the accessible video on your website, as a platform like YouTube does not offer options for that. And in the future, it will be possible to add sign language as well.

Scribit in action: sample video

Click the buttons below the video to start the audio description and description of the video.

Necessary support

Eveline Ferwerda, creator of scribit.tv and .pro: "Scribit.pro originated from scribit.tv, a project with the Bartiméus Fund. Video has long been unjustifiably secondary in making content accessible. But with that you exclude a lot of people. Audio description, for example, is necessary as support for people with visual impairments, because otherwise they don't understand the content or miss out on important information. Imagine all kinds of things happening on screen while you hear a piece of music. Without audio description, the video is then impossible to follow for someone who cannot see. We studied what this means for people with visual or hearing impairments. It has a lot of impact. For example, one of them indicated, "So that means I can't participate. Another indicated, 'If I come across an inaccessible video I skip it. Then I feel left out.'"

Welcome solution

Shift2 and Scribit.pro have joined forces from the same vision; to provide the most complete support possible.

Twan: "This is a great solution that really helps our customers move forward and that they also need. They can get started with the tools themselves, but we also offer the option to have some videos processed by the professionals at Scribit.pro.

Eveline: "It's a time-consuming job and a little bit of language skills are involved. We are therefore happy to help. All you have to do is upload the YouTube video. Then we get to work on it. Within 5 working days the video will have text, subtitles and audio description. Shift2 ensures that the video is properly added to your CMS. That way you can be sure your videos are satisfactory and you have nothing to worry about."