Amara’s mission is to foster collaboration and inclusion across the globe by enabling people to bridge language and accessibility barriers through online video content. Since 2010, Amara has been making video content more accessible through subtitles for Deaf and Hard of Hearing audiences, as well as through translations into over 300 languages. As part of the Participatory Culture Foundation (a 501c3 non-profit organization) we’ve been working to move accessibility forward since our beginnings.
In honor of our common mission for enabling a more inclusive world, we’re excited to introduce a series about people leading the way in the accessibility space. Whether it’s advocating for disability rights or petitioning for better captions or subtitles, these are the passionate people who are consciously making a difference in this media ecosystem.
This new blog series will feature individuals who are in this ecosystem with us, and who are leading the way in the accessibility space in areas such as captioning and translation, Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Vision Impaired, and so much more. We want to highlight the forward-looking leaders who share a common mission with Amara for a more participatory and accessible world.
The Amara Editor has won multiple awards for innovation, and its impact on accessibility. In this Accessibility blog post we highlighted a partial list of the accessibility goals on Amara’s development roadmap. We want everyone to benefit from the free education, culture, and media available online. Our goal is to see an exponential number of videos become more accessible: to people with hearing and visual disabilities, across language barriers, and around literacy barriers (via dubbed audio).
At its core, accessibility is about inclusion and access to information is an essential part of inclusion. We believe a participatory and inclusive world leads to a more understanding and caring society.
What you can do
When you volunteer to translate or subtitle a video, you are helping to accomplish this mission. Thereby joining the community of accessibility advocates that will be highlighted in this series.
Check out these simple subtitling guidelines to help create quality subtitles through collaboration, readability, and an audience-first focus.
We are really looking forward to sharing this series with you. Is there a leader in the accessibility space whose amazing passion and drive has touched your life? We’d love to hear what accessibility means to you and learn about accessibility advocacy leaders who you know are making a difference.
