Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing people

The large number of people with disabilities

There are 430 million deaf people in the world. That's 5 % of the total population. Furthermore, 1.6 billion people in the world suffer from hearing loss. In Germany alone, there are 10 million hard-of-hearing people! By 2050, the WHO expects 2.5 billion people to suffer from hearing loss. These numbers are rising steadily as the world's population grows and life expectancy increases. This means that in the future, one in four people worldwide will have to live with a hearing impairment. Additionally, according to forecasts, the number of people with severe disabilities will increase from 430 million to 711 million. (according to WHO)

Communication

There are big communication problems between blind and deaf people. A subtitled video allows deaf people to read the subtitles and understand the video. Blind people can grasp video content by listening and thus both disabilities are overcome at the same time.

Quantity and quality

On television, subtitles are either missing entirely or are of low quality. TV content is often summarized in the subtitles or words are simply omitted. For deaf people, this
means they can only partially understand the content and dialog, or not at all. Therefore, the German Association of the Deaf demands high-quality subtitles as well as professional interpreters.

High Internet activity

People with disabilities are more active than average on the Internet:

- People without disabilities about 5.1 days per week
- People with disabilities about 6.5 days per week

Additionally, one in two people with a disability owns a smartphone.

Accessible education for deaf people

Videos and podcasts have become indispensable media for education, explainer videos, or tutorials. Without subtitles or transcriptions, these formats are difficult or impossible to access for people with
hearing impairments.

New processes for creating subtitles

Until now, creating transcripts and subtitles has been a time-consuming and costly process. State-of the-art technology such as automatic speech recognition significantly speeds up this process and
massively reduces costs for companies.

Legal Requirements

Public institutions are particularly required to comply with BITV 2.0. This is the so-called Ordinance on Barrier-Free Information Technology. It came into force as part of the Disability Equality Act.
According to it, modern information technology should be fully accessible. This means that people with disabilities can use content just as easily as people without disabilities. This also applies to
videos, of course. Essentially, there are three points to creating accessible videos:

a. The video must include sign language.

b. The video must have subtitles.

c. Ideally, videos are provided in plain language.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bitv_2_0/BJNR184300011.html
The EU has also issued new guidelines regarding accessibility for websites: Digital accessibility according to "European Accessibility Act (EAA)“. While accessibility for websites in the public sectore was already regulated by a directive (EU-2016/2102) in 2020/2021, the new regulation (EU Directive 2019/882) now applies to private companies and must be implemented by July 2025 at the latest.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32016L2102&qid=1677751004176, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/882/oj?locale=de

Accessibility with alugha

alugha makes creating transcripts and subtitles a user-friendly process that saves costs and time:

1. alugha's speech-to-text transcription is of very high quality. For example, punctuation is automatically placed correctly in the text and editing the transcript is clear, simple, and fast thanks to
the user-friendly interface. You can divide the text into segments of 30 seconds. If there are any errors, you can fix them in seconds.

2. In addition, alugha has an enormous advantage over other transcription software: The subtitles or transcript can be translated directly into one or many other languages. Furthermore, thanks to the text-to-speech feature, your video will not only have multilingual subtitles, but also audio tracks in all of your desired languages as well. As a result, the video is not only accessible, but also languageaccessible and you gain a higher reach and can greatly increase your target audience.

3. All audio tracks and subtitles are contained in a single video file. This saves storage space and energy without any loss in quality, and it's also environmentally friendly.

4. You don't need additional tools when you use alugha! Everything is done on the alugha platform without any interruption in the workflow. Teams can also work together on a project anytime, anywhere.

5. alugha offers several plans. This allows small and large projects to be implemented quickly and cost-effectively.