Deafness+and+audio+podcasts

This topic interests me because I am personally such a huge fan of podcasts and have learned a great deal through listening to them over the last 10 years. It occurred to me that a large part of the population who lives with a hearing impediment doesn't necessarily have access to this wonderful and vast new media that so many people enjoy. This wiki already has an article on video podcasting, but I’m looking at audio podcasts.

The simplest solution to making podcasts accessible is to provide a transcript and publish it to the web via the RSS feed associated with the podcasts. In this way a hearing-impaired audience can read the transcript of the podcast and understand all the content. The content of podcasts is ever-expanding, and is quickly becoming an indispensable source of news, culture and entertainment.

There are three main options for creating a transcript, and each has a drawback. > > >
 * 1)  The creator can hire a transcription service, which will be accurate but costly.
 * 1)  The creator can transcribe the podcast manually, which is time-consuming.
 * 1)  The creator can use web 2.0 audio recognition software, which is becoming less costly but is not always accurate.

Regardless of the downsides, publishing a transcript can have benefits for all consumers of the media beyond just the hearing-impaired. A transcript is indexed by search engines and makes the content easier to find by all users, and increases the visibility of the podcast. Even some hearing audience members may prefer to read the text version of a podcast in order to save time. Each creator will have to make his/her own personal decision about which method is most appropriate for their situation, but they should keep in mind that a transcript is considered one of the best practices for podcasting.

Reference articles: [] [] [] https://web4alllearners.wikispaces.com/Deafness+and+Podcasting