The birth of podcasting opened a lot of opportunity for many individuals and businesses. Thanks to the release of iTunes 4.9 by Apple in June 2005, the process was even further simplified. Well, simply creating podcasts is no longer enough; if you want to use them to their full potential, they need to be transcribed.  (Read more about how simple the podcast transcription process is.) Transcribing interviews is a surefire way to stretch your compelling content to the max, ensuring that no potential audience member is left behind.

Search Engine Optimization
It is no great secret that the internet is saturated with information. You can type one word or phrase in a search engine and be given ultimately thousands of pages of related sites. Unfortunately, few users explore past the first page and those who do rarely move on past the second one. The only way to rank in one of these coveted positions is with proper search engine optimization and part of that equation is transcribing interviews. It should also be noted that search engines are famous for frequently changing the criteria in which they identify quality content, so keeping up to speed with these changes will keep you well-ranked.

Social Media Sharing
When transcribing interviews done via podcast, you make it easier for them to be sharde on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. Listeners are able to easily highlight a portion of text they want to share, and of course more sharing equals increased traffic for you. It should also be noted that shared content typically ranks higher in organic searches on search engines like Google and Bing. (more…)

Wether you’re a realtor creating videos for homes you are selling, or you’re creating a series of cooking lesson videos, it is important that you take the steps to be within 508 compliance. It should also be noted that videos created by federal employers are required to be user-friendly for individuals with disabilities.

What is 508 Compliance?

If you are not quite sure what 508 compliance is, you are certainly not alone. There are plenty of others who hear the term for the first time, and start scratching their head.

In a nutshell, this is a collection of standards that need to be followed to ensure all electronic and information technologies that are used by the federal government are accessible to individuals with disabilities. The standards were first listed in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, but the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 created by Congress further strengthened these laws.

Websites and videos that are 508-compliant are required to have code and practices that take disabled end users into consideration. This includes individuals with audio or visual handicaps, epilepsy, color blindness or are motion impaired.  To be sure you are within 508 compliance, you should utilize an amazing transcriptions service such as Speechpad.

Although the laws apply primarily to the federal government, you may be interested to know that you have to be fully proficient in this matter to even bid on a web-related government contract.

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Speechpad now supports SRT subtitles for virtually any video. Simply request subtitles when you submit your order. We’ll provide fully timestamped SRT (SubRip) output for each of your videos. This has many advantages for video producers, television show makers, movie studios, and production companies. It means that low-cost subtitling is now available for all of your video needs.

Subtitling is often a requirement for online video. Movies and TV shows have been captioned (subtitled) for years, but the process has always been expensive and cumbersome. Speechpad makes this easy. Simply upload your video from the web or your local computer (Mac or PC) and submit it for transcription. We’ll create an SRT file as part of the transcription process. You get the same high quality transcriptions but you also get an SRT file as output. You can then use this with YouTube or with any captioning software or video product that supports SRT format.

It’s a new era of cost-accessibility and it means that captions are easier than ever to include with your videos. That’s good news for the hearing impaired and anyone who would benefit from the inclusion of captions in videos.

SubRip (SRT format) typically appears as:

1
00:00:15,100 --> 00:00:22,250
Welcome to tonight's program. 

2
00:00:22,250 --> 00:00:28,600
Before we get started, a word from our sponsor.

Each block of text contains a number, timecodes, and the associated text. SRT format is compatible with a 
variety of programs and online sites. Get captioning today with Speechpad.