Virtual life will continue to be the new normal in 2022 & beyond.

As we step into year 2022, the expectations of changes as well as challenges are coming our way. We, at Vanan Services, decided to discuss about a few predictions on video and media accessibility that might end up being helpful for thousands of businesses around the globe.
And, captioning services are going to be a major part of any business activity.

Increase in Virtual & Hybrid Events

The last two years have taught us the actual importance of videos and the internet. The Corona virus pandemic made us all learn and work virtually. Remote learning and communication have become an integral part of our life. 

Keeping all this in mind, our prediction is that the virtual and hybrid events will continue in 2022 regardless of the pandemic. In fact, the requirement of making such content accessible to people speaking different languages will increase soon.

Captioning services will be involved more along with the translation services. This makes the video content fit into the needs of international customers and audiences.

Increase in Hybrid Work Environments

Work from home/remote working, the new normal way of working, is the solution that every company follows these days. Just like the importance given to IT & presentations, captions for videos will also be given equal importance in the future. The probability of businesses conducting video conferences, online meetings, and virtual training programs will be higher.

With the involvement of online videos in so many forms for work purposes, the demand for closed captioning services is also expected to increase by a great number.

More Organizations with Accessibility Practices

Organizations & businesses came across the global virtual movement in the past 2 years. Be it for work purposes, school learning, or social justice, the effect of social media and internet power has shown its true colors.

We are expecting that this trend of formalizing various DEIBA practices will keep on increasing in 2022. It is very clear now that candidates or employees of an organization do care about their company efforts. The young professionals are highly active in accessibility practices which makes it important for the companies to implement them.

Another important thing here is that the organizations do have the chance of losing talented professionals if they don’t prioritize accessibility.

Accessibility & Disability will Become Mainstream

You might have seen a few advertising campaigns featuring folks with disabilities. Some of the brands are putting their efforts into prioritizing accessibility and disability.

26% of the population of the United States lives with some kind of disability. Hiring or including people with disabilities has increased with trend setters such as Google & Amazon.  

It is predicted that various industries and organizations are going to start employing people with disabilities. And this will increase the need to caption videos in the future.

Extended Reality Accessibility to Continue

The role of video accessibility is not very clear yet with augmented reality, virtual reality, or metaverse. But the leaders of the industries are already exploring these emerging spaces with respect to accessibility.

Our prediction is that much more research work will take place, more publications will join and a lot of standards will be made for this particular area. Topics like captioning in XR will be an important topic of research for 2022 along with other topics like assistive technologies and more.

Market Activities & Fundraising for Videos, ML & Accessibility

This year, we all saw a huge number of fundraising and growth for videos, machine learning, and accessibility across all industries. The numbers were record-breaking.

We have expectations for the same or maybe even more in the coming year of 2022. The excitement and the level of market activities taking place around this area are already huge and the probability of them increasing to a record level is surely predicted.

Clear Standards for Live Video Accessibility

An unfortunate truth about live videos, broadcasting channels, and OTT platforms is that it is impossible to caption it all professionally. This leads us to a few questions like:

• What is the possibility of ASR acceptance?
• Is professional captioning important for accessibility?
• Are ASR captions enough?
• Are there sufficient legal standards for organizations to decide where and when to use different live captions?

The answers to these questions may be not very clear as of now, but expectations for clearer standards about the same are predicted.

Transcription for Podcasts & Audio Only Content

There is no doubt about the benefits of transcripts for audio content. Increased accessibility & boosted SEO are two main benefits. But, the podcast industry is not yet completely ready to accept transcription for making content accessible for the deaf and hard-of-hearing population.

The recent famous lawsuits are surely expected to have a great impact on the podcasting industry in the coming future. It made it important for the streaming platforms to provide captions for all the videos. Now, captions are a must for OTT platforms. We have the predictions that the same will be the case for transcription in the podcast industry.

Conclusion

The demand for captioning services in going to increase. Collaborate with the best service provider to cater to all your needs at the most affordable rates in the industry.