Ibai Llanos is a famous streamer in Spain known for his charisma and his great sense of humor. Aside from making videos, playing or doing a commentary on different videogames and events, this Bilbao native is quite generous, as he has raised funds for the victims of the volcano in La Palma and for medical associations. What really caught my attention was that he decided to subtitle all his YouTube videos in Spanish and make them accessible to people with hearing difficulties, as you can see in his tweet below:
[Translated tweet: We were getting messages telling us that we sometimes forget about people who can’t listen to our YouTube Videos. So, my editor @unosMemiyos, who is awesome, reached out to a company and now we have ALL the videos subtitled. You’re the best, dude.]
This is quite innovative, as today’s most important streamers would rather use YouTube automatic subtitles, and some of them have nothing to do with what is said in the video. Furthermore, according to the WHO, there are currently 1.5 billion people who suffer from hearing loss. Therefore, this part of the population will not be able to enjoy media content if they do not have accessible and quality subtitles.
As we all know, the world is constantly changing and with it our way of consuming content on the Internet. Surely when watching your social networks, you may have noticed that many ads and videos are played automatically without sound, but they are subtitled so that you can watch them without limitations: either because you don’t have headphones, because you’re on the subway or wherever. So, it’s no wonder that 85% of Facebook users prefer to watch muted videos, according to a Digiday article.
Moreover, according to the article “Video Captions Benefit Everyone” written by Morton Ann Gernsbacher, captioning for the hearing impaired also benefits the hearing population. Videos with captions help them retain much more information, thus aiding their understanding and comprehension of the video. In addition, it helps boost children who are beginning to read, as well as adults who are learning another language. For all these reasons, I would like to emphasize the importance of having quality subtitles in the media for all the benefits that this entails. As we have seen in this article, accessible subtitling favors both people with disabilities and the hearing population, increasing the number of users who can watch your video, among others. If you were a streamer, would you subtitle your videos? Let me know your opinion in the comments below!
References:
Digiday (2016). 85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound.
https://digiday.com/media/silent-world-facebook-video/
Morton Ann Gernsbacher (2017). Video Captions Benefit Everyone.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5214590/#S2title
Localization Lab. (s.f.) La importancia de los subtítulos: 5 motivos por los cuales los subtítulos mejoran los vídeos.
https://localizationlab.com/es/la-importancia-de-los-subtitulos-5-motivos-por-los-cuales-los-subtitulos-mejoran-los-videos/
Viakaizen (2023). Por qué los subtítulos en vídeos y anuncios son imprescindibles.
https://viakaizen.com/porque-subtitular-videos/