Seven Years of Asking: I’m Still Waiting for WordPress.com to Publish Captioned Videos

I’m writing a post I didn’t think I would ever write. It’s about a multi-million dollar company where I’m a 10+ year customer.

And whose services I’ve advocated for years.

Which makes this post even harder to write.

In the past, I’ve contacted organizations and businesses about the inaccessibility of the content they’ve published on the web.

And when they’ve fixed the content, making it accessible to everyone, I’ve written about it on this blog.

I’ve shared accessibility successes about numerous businesses, including:

• Adobe
• InVision
• Local video producer Blue Racer Productions

Yet, the one company I’ve had the most contact with over 10 years, a company whose stated mission years ago was to democratize publishing, has chosen to make their content inaccessible.

I had hoped to publish a blog post sharing a success story about them.

Instead I’m sharing my frustrations over my own seven-year journey asking them to improve web accessibility.

What the Company Didn’t Do

There’s a multitude of ways organizations publish inaccessible content on the web: low color contrast, long sentences and paragraphs, and no transcripts for podcasts to name a few.

And often the inaccessible content is due to lack of knowledge: their web producers aren’t aware of the issue.

Which is why education is the first step toward improving web accessibility.

For the company I’m writing about, they specifically chose to produce videos without real captions.

Despite being provided information and resources on how to make their videos accessible.

The multimillion dollar company relies on YouTube autocaptions, which are known for their

• Inaccuracy
• Mangled words
• Run on sentences

YouTube autocaptions can be so bad they’ve been nicknamed autocraptions.

What you need to know about WordPress.com videos: all their videos have scripts.

Which means the WordPress.com production team can upload their scripts to YouTube (takes a couple minutes).

YouTube will automatically synchronize the script to the spoken word.

The end result is a captioned video with transcript.

I provided the actual steps to WordPress.com to upload the script.

Time Flies: How Long Have I Been Asking?

I checked my own history of asking the company to add real captions.

Originally I thought it had been five years.

No, it’s been seven years.

Time flies, doesn’t it?

Here’s my request from seven years ago:

@wordpressdotcom Love the article! WordPress in 137 languages is amazing. Question: when will you be adding captions to the video?

— Deborah Edwards-Oñoro (@redcrew) June 26, 2015

The company is WordPress.com.

Owned by Automattic.

Makes no sense to me why WordPress.com has ignored my requests for seven years to make their video content accessible to everyone.

And who knows how many times other people have made the same request.

I’ve asked WordPress.com on Twitter over a dozen times for captioned videos.

And I’ve shared my frustration in comments on WordPress.com’s published blog posts.

Most recently, I posted a comment in response to WordPress.com ‘s latest announcement about their YouTube channel.

Since it’s possible my requests were lost on Twitter or the comment removed on the WordPress.com blog post, I’m publishing my request on my own blog.

Dear WordPress.com: Add Real Captions to Your Videos

Here’s what I wrote today in a comment to WordPress.com ‘s announcement of their YouTube channel:

If your goal is to democratize publishing and ecommerce one website at a time, as you state in the first sentence of your video, you would have added captions to your video. Not relied on autocraptions.

Without captions, people who are:

• Deaf or hard of hearing
• Speak another language
• Comprehend written word better than spoken word
• Work in quiet/noisy environments

can’t consume your content.

With autocraptions, you’ve created barriers to a large number of your audience. And your prospective audience.

Given all your videos are scripted, it’s an extra 2 minutes for you to upload the script to YouTube and have YouTube synchronize the captions to the spoken word.

For over 7 years, I’ve asked WordPress dot com to add captions to the videos you publish.

Yet, you’ve never acted to do that.

Again I ask, why are you creating barriers for people with disabilities as well as others who can’t consume your video content?

Summary

Making organizations aware of the inaccessible content they publish on the web is the first step everyone can take.

Whether you contact the company on Twitter, customer support, or in their blog posts, you expect a reply to your request for accessible web content.

It’s wonderful to announce the outcome and to share it, when the reply results in accessible web content.

Am I frustrated with WordPress.com? Yes, I am.

When WordPress.com chooses to not act over a seven-year period of requests, it’s time to call them out.

Update February 18, 2022: I have a good outcome to share! After reading my post, a WordPress.com employee contacted me on Twitter. We discussed the issue of the auto-generated captions on published YouTube videos.

They shared my feedback with their team members and as of February 17, 2022 all published YouTube videos have English captions.

Success!

I asked WordPress.com on Twitter whether a change in the video production process will include adding real captions before future videos are published on YouTube.

Their response: that’s the plan!

I’m glad to learn about the change, and look forward to WordPress.com future videos. It’s a step forward in creating videos that are accessible to everyone.