Integrating Health Literacy and Web Accessibility
Samuel Mendez
PhD Candidate, Artist, #PublicVoices Fellow, AJPH Student Think Tank 2024
This is the 4th article in a series on Networked Health Literacy. Last time, we debunked networked disinformation. Before that, we mapped media environments. This time, we'll make videos more accessible. This way as many people as possible can engage with your message—and share it!
1-Minute Takeaways
If you only have a minute, here are some tips to start making your videos more accessible.
Why accessibility?
Accessibility and health literacy have a lot in common. They both increase the potential size of your audience. They both make it easier for people to engage with your message. And they are both harder to address if you wait until later in your project.
Accessibility plays a key role in networked health literacy. If you want your message to spread, then make it usable for as many people as you can. As a bonus, text like captions and alt text help with search engine optimization too.
As health communicators, we want to make sure we serve people regardless of disability status. And we want to make few assumptions about our audience. Maybe they could watch our YouTube video closely, but they'd rather do chores at the same time. Maybe they can only hear our video. Maybe they put the streaming quality low to save on data. Web accessibility helps us reach people in lots of different situations.
Starter Tip for Accessibility: Don't Rely on Just One Sense
There are a lot of aspects to making videos more accessible. But here's a good place to start: make sure people don't have to physically see or hear your video to get the important info.
Include Closed Captions
Closed captions convey audio info through text, timed to appear on screen as audio plays. Most social video platforms like YouTube allow you to upload closed captions separate from video files. This lets users change the size and color of text to fit their needs. This is better than putting captions as graphic layers in a video, which users can't customize.
You don't want to just use YouTube's automatic captions. But they are a good start. Follow the video below to get started. You can even download the caption file for use in other video players.
But not all social media platforms have this function. For example, Instagram and TikTok don't. Here you might want to put text as a graphic layer on a video. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing. This is even more reason to use multiple platforms. It's also more reason to provide text alternatives, as outlined below.
Provide Text Alternatives
Closed captions are great. But they're not everything. Some people may use a screen reader to engage with your content. Others may prefer a version to print or screenshot more info at once. If you want your message to spread, account for people in these situations too.
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You can edit your closed captions file until it stands on its own. Delete the timing info. Keep the speaker info. Combine short passages into paragraphs. Add descriptions of important visuals. Add headings to mimic your video structure. Add new headings to make the text more readable. Add links where they are helpful. Just make it clear where you added more text for clarity.
When you're done, put this transcript in a webpage format. Provide a link to it in your video description. Here's an example of a text transcript of a podcast as a separate webpage from Web Accessibility Initiative.
This helps you reach more people regardless of sight or hearing. It also gives your message another chance to pop up in search engines.
Include Descriptions of Visual Info
Imagine someone playing your video in one browser tab while working in another. Or watching your video in low resolution. Or hearing to your video but not seeing it. People in these scenarios might not get your video's visual info. But they also might not go to a transcript. To reach these people, include audio descriptions of visual info.
If you plan for this from the beginning, you can better integrate this info into videos. You can make sure people say their names and describe their surroundings. You can make sure they describe anything they refer to on screen. This is especially important for social platforms like YouTube or TikTok, which tend to lack options to upload audio description files separately. Here's an example of audio descriptions integrated into an instructional video script, via Web Accessibility Initiative:
If you don't think about this until later in the process, you can still provide this information while editing. Here's an example of a separate voice describing visual information in a more narrative video from Web Accessibility Initiative:
If you go this route, you might upload two versions of the video: one with audio descriptions and one without. Or you might just upload the version with audio descriptions. If you upload videos to your website directly, you can use a more accessible video player like Able Player. This lets you include audio descriptions as separate tracks users can control.
Conclusion
If the thought of providing captions and transcripts and audio descriptions makes you want to make shorter videos... good! Planning for these extra steps might help you focus in on the main message of your videos. Planning audio and video media for accessibility from the beginning can also help you plan for health literacy. Use fewer words overall. Use only necessary figures and graphs. Focus on one call to action. This is a great way start working toward networked health literacy.
About the Author
Sam is a PhD candidate in Population Health Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Their research combines media studies and computational social science to help expand the scope of health literacy. Outside of research, their work focuses on supporting social media communication that can help advance health equity.