Captions for business – why it’s a good idea

If you’re a business owner, it has probably never occurred to you to add captions to your workday. And why should you, you’re not deaf, right?

Well, we’re here to explain why captions for business is the smart thing to do, no matter what type of business you’re in!

Captions help everyone

It’s not just deaf and hard of hearing people who benefit from captions.

As we’ve discovered during the pandemic, Zoom meetings can be a right pain in the backside, with people talking over each other, microphones cutting out, delays in the stream and background noise making it difficult to hear what’s going on.

Captions would help with all of that.

Live captioning can help keep all staff members informed and involved with what’s going on, with transcripts available to read back at a later date, keeping everyone on the same page about what was agreed.

To be effective and accurate, you need a stenographer or palantypist to produce the captions, not automatic captioning.

The photo above is of our live captioning at a Microsoft conference. It’s inclusive, creative, and just beautiful.

In any kind of training video, captions have been shown to improve comprehension and test results. On top of that, they are an excellent way for foreign workers to keep up with what’s going on, especially if the speaker or tutor has an accent or mumbles.

Also, you kinda have to do it…

This is the part you’re probably not aware of.

As laid out in the Equality Act 2010, as an employer, you are legally required to make “reasonable adjustments” to accommodate those with hearing difficulties.

Captions for business are a way to meet those legal requirements. They provided equal access for employees, and thus comply with anti-discrimination laws, but it’s not just for deaf and hard of hearing employees, as we said before, everyone benefits from captions!

Captions can help your business grow

If you have any videos online, especially YouTube, then captions can help you with your SEO.

YouTube is owned by Google, and they want the best websites in their results page.

If you have a video online explaining what you do, then Google’s crawl bots can’t watch that video and decide to move you up the results page.

If your video has captions however, then those same bots can read the transcript of what’s being said in the video and place you higher on Google’s front page.

Even if your short, 5-minute video is content heavy, then the captions might contain the equivalent information of a small website.

Google loves this, especially if the video is relating to a specific question. If your video answers a query someone has typed into Google, then Google will bring it up as the first result.

Like we said before, captions for business help everyone!

If you would like to know more about captions for business, then contact us today.

We provide both open and closed captions in over 30 document formats, and as a commitment to our high standard, our captioning work is checked for you.

We also provide both on-site and remote live captioning, making businesses, conferences, events, teleconference calls, meetings, and seminars all more accessible.