In his Going Beyond the Listener: Accessible Audio for Podcasting webinar for 3PlayMedia, Nic Steenhout shared his tips and insights for creating accessible podcasts.
Web accessibility consultant and host of the popular A11y Rules podcast, Steenhout discussed the benefits of accessible podcasting, what makes up an accessible podcast (it’s more than a transcript), and highlighted features to consider in the platform and tools you use.
Here are my notes.
Going Beyond the Listener: Accessible Audio for Podcasting
- There are many benefits to creating accessible podcasts, the main reason is to make sure everyone can access your content. Which means making the podcast accessible to people with disabilities.
- Creating an accessible podcast means you’ll reach a wider audience
- Adding transcripts to your podcast allows search engines to index your content, bringing you more inbound traffic.
- When you have a transcript, you’ll have more opportunities for your podcast to show up in search engine results -> more people will find your podcast.
- Additional reasons to add transcripts: more people can consume your content, including non-native speakers of your language, those who work in noisy environments, and people who have slow connections or limited bandwidth
- Items to consider for your transcript: Timing: include timestamps (useful for synchronized transcripts), Names: include speaker names when there is more than one speaker in the episode, Verbatim: no need (adding ums to the transcript makes it more difficult to read), Clean: include words (mention background music when it starts)
- One podcast transcript workflow to consider: use a third-party vendor to create an automated transcript. Then fix the automated transcript yourself.
- Best place to put the transcript for your podcast episode? On the same page as the episode.
- Include the heading “Transcript” – makes it easy for everyone to find
- Avoid creating a downloadable document for your transcript.
- Wondering where to host your podcast? Challenging question. You don’t want to change hosts every year.
- Few podcast platforms have all the features for an accessible podcast. Most important feature to consider when looking for a host: whether they provide ability to display a transcript.
- For the audio player you use for your podcast, make sure it has keyboard-friendly buttons, visible focus styles, programatically-labelled buttons
- Examples of accessible players: Able Player and OzPlayer
- Check the accessibility of the player you’re using for your podcast. Can you use the keyboard to access all the elements? Is there visible focus as you use the keyboard?
- If your platform doesn’t allow you to show them, add links to the transcript and show notes for your podcasts
