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New Automated Captioning Enables More Audience Accessibility

October 18th, 2019 Stephanie Dang

The future of scaling digital experiences and audience engagement is dependent on content accessibility. More than five percent of the world’s population have a disabling hearing loss. That equates to roughly 466 million individuals who have difficulty hearing your webinar’s dialogue clearly, and they may not speak the same language as the speaker. Additionally, more and more of the general population are watching videos while commuting, at work or anywhere where they can’t listen to audio.

Subtitles and closed captions are having a growing influence on content consumption — from text to follow along with a video advertisement to translated subtitles to watch a foreign film on Netflix. More than ever, captioning has become one of the most effective ways to make your content highly accessible and to reach more audiences.

ON24 is excited to formally release auto-generated captioning enabling ON24 users to reach broader audiences around the world.

Easy-to-Use and Flexible Caption Controls

On-demand (including live webinars that convert to on-demand) and simulive events now can automatically generate captions. At ON24 we are always striving to give our users flexibility so we’ve added more customization and editing opportunities:

  • Make changes easily to captions with the new in-app editing tool
  • Download caption files to make changes in a different editor, if needed
  • Control whether captions are shown to viewers by default or allow viewers to choose to view captions

Scalability for Globalization

To effectively reach new audiences, you have to speak their language. And to expand your programs across different countries and regions, you don’t have to take remake your webinars or take language courses, but simply provide translated subtitles! Already Webcast Elite supports multiple languages, and our new automated captioning tool does too. Here’s what it supports:

  • 12 languages supported for automated speech-to-text file creation
  • Auto-translate captions into up to 62 languages
  • Ability to edit translated captions in-app

If you’d like to learn more about ON24 Webcast Elite, captioning and how to create more accessibility to reach viewers globally, please contact us. If you’re an ON24 customer, contact your CSM to get started.