What to expect in this course:
Every creator should strive to be as inclusive as they can. Making your stream more accessible, means more people can access your stream and have a wonderful experience!
Accessibility is an incredibly important aspect in games, movies, TV shows, and day-to-day life. However, how do you make your stream and your content accessible? How do you ensure that people can find and enjoy your content without feeling like it’s only available to limited audiences.
Steve Saylor is an accessibility advocate, consultant, content creator, & Twitch Partner. He has consulted with studios such as Ubisoft, EA and most recently Naughty Dog on “The Last Of Us Part 2.” His YouTube series started in 2015, “BLIND GAMER”, has educated viewers on how Steve is able to play games as a visually impaired gamer. It also educates viewers on the importance and knowledge of accessibility in video games.
“Making your streams accessible means that new viewers can enjoy the same experience as everyone else regardless if they have a disability or not. Offering closed captions, turning off game motions for the motion-sick, or reading out chat messages can help welcome in new viewers and help create a more inclusive community.”
This guide is intended to help you figure out the answers to those questions and create the most inclusive content possible.
Listen to the voices of those with a disability, those who are marginalized, those who are queer, trans, and people of colour. As people who’ve lived the experiences of inaccessibility and intolerance, listen to them and be aware of biases or inaccessible options you might have in your stream, community, and day-to-day life.
Course Goals:
- How to set up and use closed captions
- Learn how to verbalize descriptive text for viewers
- Discuss trigger and content warnings and how to use them to protect your community
- Learn how to format text in your media posts to be accessible for all
- Critically discuss how we can use inclusive and alternative language in your spaces
How to Create an Accessible Stream
When aiming to make your stream and community spaces more accessible, there can be a lot to think about. We have you covered with a basic checklist that discusses the bare minimum to make your stream accessible. Closed Captions Closed captions are an essential for your stream. They can provide a chance for everyone to understand what you’re saying and assist when overlapping sounds occur. From Twitch extensions, to browser sources and OBS plugins, there are plenty of ways to add captions to your stream. If you go to your Twitch Dashboard, click ‘Extensions’ and search ‘captions’ in the bar, you will get 2 options for Twitch extensions that you can utilize to easily and quickly incorporate captions into your stream. Follow the instructions to enable your plugin on Twitch and now your viewers can see captions. If you’re looking to have captions on your stream that viewers cannot turn off, OBS Studio plugin and browser source 3rd party tools are great. For websites that you just input into your streaming software as a browser source, try Webcaptioner, Pixelchat or PubNub. These third party sites allow you to customize your captions to match your brand, you just have to keep the tool’s web browser open while you stream. Pixelchat also offers the ability to invite other users to your captions. They must pick a name to appear on screen and then keep the browser open while they speak and you’re all set to go. The last aspect of captions, is to check the caption or accessibility settings for your game! Lots of games have accessibility options and offer the opportunity for in-game captions for game sounds. Adding game captions to your stream will make a world of a difference for many people who have accessibility barriers. Stream Testing Checking your...
