Key to the success of any product is increasing accessibility to reach as many consumers as possible, and for online video this has traditionally been done by expanding to new platforms or adopting new standards. However this method drives technological accessibility and does little to address physical or linguistic accessibility issues.
These issues include the rising consumption of video content at work and on smartphone platforms, when people cannot access or don’t have access to audio capabilities; and those users with hearing impairments who are unable to enjoy any video content without the addition of subtitles.
The Internet is also an increasingly homogeneous place where national and linguistic tendencies don’t end at the .es or .co.uk. Video content on the web is exposed to a diverse demographic audience, not all of whom will speak the language used in the video. Catering content to address the linguistic needs of your key demographics will increase user retention.
These factors display the necessity for video players to include caption functionality if companies wish to increase accessibility to their content.
With the addition of Closed Captions, Flumotion has added another advanced feature that will enable its customers to better engage with their users. Whether they are hard of hearing or in an environment where they cannot use audio, with the Flumotion player they can still view the content with the use of Captions.
Totally manageable from the Flumotion WebTV 360 BackOffice, the feature supports multiple languages per video asset and supports the TTML standard. Another advantage of the Flumotion WebTV 360 Caption implementation is that it is user controllable and can be turned on and off giving more customisability to the end user.
