Amara’s online subtitles editor.

Amara’s new offering links your YouTube account to a new or existing Amara account. Once that is done, all of your public videos are going to show up on your Amara profile, ready to be subtitled with the help of the platform’s subtitle editor. Users can add subtitles in dozens of languages.

You’ll also be able to invite others to help you, turning the process of captioning your videos into a collaborative project. Complete subtitles are automatically synced back to YouTube, making them accessible for anyone who watches the video. And Amara automatically edits a video’s description on YouTube, prompting your viewers to help you with the subtitling process.

YouTube’s automatic captions: not always that accurate.

Of course, YouTube already offers automatic, computer-generated captions. However, natural language processing only goes that far, and humans can greatly improve the accuracy of subtitles. But Amara’s offering is interesting for more than one reason: YouTube publishers can encourage their viewers to translate their videos into many different languages, which could help them greatly expand their audience, and subtitles can greaty improve video discoverability in search engines.

Amara, which was originally known as Universal Subtitles, has received $1 million in funding from the Mozilla Foundation and the Knight Foundation. It started out as an open access-inspired project of the Participatory Culture Foundation, but now also offers enterprise tools for corporate clients, which include Netflix, Twitter, TED and a number of online education startups. To date, Amara’s users have created 181,000 subtitle tracks across 238 languages.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• Players and Strategies for Real-Time In-Stream Advertising

Deaf and hard-of-hearing advocates had sued Netflix for allegedly violating the Americans with Disabilities act. Netflix admitted no wrongdoing as part of the consent decree, but agreed to pay the plaintiffs $755,000 in legal fees.

The company will now work to add captions to 90 percent of its content streamed hours within a year, with the final deadline for having all of its videos captioned being September 30 2014. Netflix recently partnered with the captioning platform Amara to experiment with  a crowdsourced approach to video subtitling.

Netflix isn’t the only company trying to add more captions to its videos. Amazon finally started adding captions to its Instant streaming service earlier this month, and YouTube recently began to ask its users to tell on publishers who don’t offer closed captions. Both moves are in response to FCC regulations that came into effect at the beginning of October, demanding captions for all online video content that previously aired on TV.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected Consumer 2012: A year of consolidation and integration
• Connected Consumer Q3: Netflix fumbles; Kindle Fire shines
• What Amazon’s new Kindle line means for Apple, Netflix and online media

Users who are so inclined can use a special web form to notify YouTube about videos without captions. The site will then notify the publisher about the complaint, and forward any answer to the user. YouTube does warn users that the abuse of the form can result in the termination of their account, and a spokesperson wasn’t able to tell me whether complaints will actually lead to any tangible action against non-complying publishers.

It’s the law

This kind of procedure is YouTube’s response to the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which was signed into law by President Obama in October of 2010, as well as some mandates put in place by the FCC earlier this year. Both force video sites to display captions for any video content that has previously aired on TV, as long as it hasn’t been substantially edited for online use. In other words: A whole segment of the evening news has to have subtitles, a online-only highlights reel doesn’t.

YouTube isn’t the only one scrambling to make sure that the content it hosts is compliant with the new rules. Amazon started adding closed captions to some of its Instant streaming content this week, and both Hulu and Netflix have been working for a while on adding captions to the videos they’re hosting.

In dealing with these issues, the companies find themselves often in a weird bind: The provisions that came into effect last week treat them as distributors, and put the burden on programmers to actually provide them with captions in the first place. However, some of that content simply doesn’t come with captions. Other videos aren’t covered by the same rules because they never aired on TV, or didn’t air in the U.S – but viewers obviously expect a consistent experience.

Most video sites are working on captions

That’s why most of the major players have invested significant resources into their own captioning efforts. YouTube added automatic captioning to its videos three years ago, and has since made it easier for publishers to add captions to their clips.

Netflix recently started to work with the captioning provider Amara to experiment with a crowd-sourced approach that would allow the company to add more captions to its videos more quickly. And Hulu has a number of its employees working on adding captions to its videos and improve existing captions.

Of course, these efforts aren’t entirely altruistic. YouTube, Hulu, Amazon and Netflix have to comply with the FCC’s mandate, and they’ve been under pressure from disability advocates to go even further. The National Association of the Deaf sued Netflix for not providing captions for part of its catalog last year, and sites like CNN.com have faced legal action over the issue as well.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What the shift to the cloud means for the future EPG
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• How consumer media will change in 2013

Captions for web video have been a bit of a hot button issue for some time: Disability advocates have been arguing that web video providers aren’t doing enough to make their clips accessible to disabled viewers, and have actually sued both CNN and Netflix over missing captions.

They also successfully pushed for the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which largely focuses on the way traditional TV networks and their online distribution partners present their fare on the internet. The law itself didn’t actually contain any firm deadlines for TV networks to adopt online captioning, but instead authorized the FCC to do so. The Commission set a September 30 deadline earlier this year, but the Digital Media Association, whose members include Amazon, Apple and YouTube, argued that the industry needed more time.

The FCC didn’t agree, and is sticking with the September 30 deadline – with one big exception: Distributors of TV content will have to render closed captions, but they won’t have to provide the raw captioning data to the web video player to allow for further customization. What does that mean? The original FCC rule included a mandate that would have allowed consumers to change the font size and color of captions to improve readability. These requirements now have been postponed for another 16 months. Starting September 30, deaf and hard-of-hearing consumers will have a right to access to basic captions, without these kinds of bells and whistles.

Of course, many sites already offer closed captioning for at least a part of their web video inventory, and that likely won’t change at the end of next month. The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act only covers programming that’s also shown on TV, and exempts any online-only programming. Even TV news clips that have been edited for the web don’t fall under the requirement – but that likely won’t stop disability advocates from going after providers of these kinds of video.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How consumer media will change in 2013
• What the shift to the cloud means for the future EPG
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1

Users can now select automatic captioning for Japanese videos by clicking on the CC button and then selecting Transcribe audio:

YouTube rolled out auto-captioning for English-language videos in late 2009. The site expanded the feature to all of its English-language videos in March 2010.

Captions for online video recently came into the spotlight when disability advocates sued Netflix and CNN for failing to provide subtitles for each and every video the companies are serving up online. YouTube’s effort to bring auto-captioning to Japan has been hailed by the country’s Federation of the Deaf, but Google Technical Program Manager for Accessibility Engineering Naomi Black cautioned on Monday that publishers should merely understand the auto-captioning provided by the site as a starting point. On Google+, she explained:

As someone who posts content to YouTube, I wouldn’t rely on auto-captions without review, but it’s a great starting place for making accurate captions, since the video owner can download and edit the captions. And as a viewer, if the video owner hasn’t provided any captions, it does give you some insight into what the video is about.

There’s also another big benefit for publishers and Google alike in expanding automatic captioning: Captions make videos searchable, expanding the discoverability of videos both on YouTube itself as well as via Google. This could help to add more views and improve monetization of video assets.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected Consumer Market Overview, Q2 2010
• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1

The field test is spearheaded by Google Technical Program Manager for Accessibility Engineering Naomi Black as well as the Engineering Director Chee Chew, who kicked off the initiative with a post to Google Plus that explained his personal stake in the issue:

“One area that I’m personally quite passionate about is facilitating communications and community for the deaf. My grandfather, aunt, and uncle were/are all deaf. While I’m very much a novice, I find ASL to be a beautiful expressive language. I hope that Hangouts can be awesome for the deaf (and hard of hearing) community as well as the hearing.”

Video chat applications have long been used by hearing impaired users to communicate via sign language. Skype seems to be particularly popular with hard of hearing users, and some users have turned to the service to learn and practice sign language.

Google is asking Google Plus Hangouts users for feedback on sign language support.

Multiuser video chat would be the logical next step for hard of hearing users, but there are also some technical challenges associated with group video conferencing. Google Hangouts, for example, is optimized for audible communication, as it switches its focus between users based on their microphone input. The idea of this feature is to prominently display the video camera input of the user who is currently talking, which has the added benefit of giving users an incentive not to talk over each other.

Gauging participation based on microphone input levels obviously doesn’t work for users who communicate via sign language, so Google is now looking for other cues. “We need an indicator for who has the floor,” explained Chee in his post, adding: “I’m sure there are subtle issues that I don’t know.”

Making its video products accessible to deaf users isn’t just stewardship for Google; it could also help the company avoid future liabilities. Disability advocates have begun targeting online media offerings in recent weeks to force them to adopt closed captions for web video. Lawsuits against CNN and Netflix allege the companies discriminate against deaf and hard of hearing users by failing to provide captions for each and every video served online. Some of the points made by the plaintiffs in these cases could also be used to argue that a video chat service that focuses on audible speech discriminates against deaf users.

Regardless of the motivation, early feedback from Google Plus users about the Hangouts field test is overwhelmingly supportive and even enthusiastic. In a comment on Chew’s post, one user summed up his feelings this way:

“I actually cried with joy at reading this post and finding out that Google and the Google+ team actually care about all of their user base. Thank you very much for just thinking about us.”

Picture of kids learning sign language courtesy of Flickr user daveynin.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected Consumer Q2: Digital music meets the cloud; e-book growth explodes
• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1

Each and every video on the Khan Academy’s website now comes with a subtitle menu that allows viewers to pick the language of their choosing. Some of the videos, like the first lesson of Khan’s Arithmetic course, already feature plenty of translations, ranging from Spanish to Chinese to Tamil. Check out the clip below, complete with all of the available subtitles:

Other clips come with fewer languages, and some don’t have any captions at all yet. Community members can transcribe these videos through an easy-to-use online captions editor, and existing transcriptions can be peer-edited to work out any kinks.

Khan Academy’s translation project director Bilal Musharraf told us via email that Universal Subtitles was the ideal partner to pull of this kind of internationalization of the site’s video assets. “It was a good match for what we were looking for because its basic service of enabling an existing volunteer community to gather subtitles was available at no cost,” he said. Eventually, the subtitles will also be used as scripts for translators to voice over the videos, Musharraf explained.

Khan is only one of a growing number of sites that relies on Universal Subtitles for translation and accessibility. The initiative was launched less than a year ago by the non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation, but it already helped site owners and volunteers to transcribe around 100,000 videos. Some of its other users include Mozilla and Al-Jazeera, which recently began to use the platform to crowdsource the translation of citizen media footage from Syria, Tunisia and other Arab spring hot spots.

Crowdsourcing captions not only makes content from Khan and others more accessible both to people with hearing disabilities and speakers of languages other than English, it can also help with SEO efforts. Full-text transcripts of videos can be indexed by search engines, making video assets easier to discover. “It’s a huge part of where online video is headed,” said Participatory Culture Foundation cofounder Nicholas Reville via email.

It’s also something online video makers increasingly are forced to do: Congress passed a law last year that will eventually force broadcasters to provide closed captions for any web video that also aired on TV. Last week, disability advocates sued CNN and Netflix to force the companies to caption all video on their sites. The plaintiffs in both cases argued that CNN and Netflix discriminate against deaf viewers by not providing captions.

The outcome of the cases is unclear at this point, but a legal precedent in favor of disability rights advocates could potentially force a wide range of online video publishers to provide subtitles for their video catalog. Quite a few publishers might decide to follow the Khan Academy’s example and appeal to their audiences to help with captioning.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected Consumer 2012: A year of consolidation and integration
• When video gets democratized, who wins and who loses?
• Managing infinite choice: the new era of TV user interfaces

The Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness (GLAD) as well as four individual plaintiffs allege that CNN violates California’s Civil Rights Act and the state’s Disabled Persons Act by serving videos without closed captions online. The plaintiffs are seeking class action status on behalf of all deaf and hard of hearing persons in California, and want to get the court to issue an injunction against Time Warner as well as force the company to pay statutory damages. GLAD estimates that there are some 100,000 deaf people in California.

The advocates say they contacted Time Warner about the issue before filing the lawsuit, but the media company refused to change its course and add captions to CNN.com. They point to this refusal as proof for Time Warner’s alleged discriminatory practices. “Through this refusal, (Time Warner) denies people who are deaf or hard of hearing access to much of the most important content it offers through CNN.com,” the complaint reads. “We have not been served and decline to comment further at this time,” we were told by a CNN spokesperson.

The issue at the heart of this lawsuit is not new, as disabilities rights advocates have long pressed for captioning online videos. Requirements to do so were part of the Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which passed Congress with bipartisan support in September and then was signed into law by President Obama in October. However, the online video industry largely dodged a bullet with that law, as online-only programming is exempt from these requirements. Broadcasters will eventually have to caption online videos that previously aired on TV, but the law includes a generous transition period.

The lawsuit filed this week takes a different approach by relying on much broader laws, which could have far wider implications. For example, it defines CNN’s website as a “public place,” which would have to be equally accessible to persons with disabilities under the state’s Disabled Persons Act. One could of course make the same argument for any other website publicly accessible online. This could mean that any site serving up video in California could face similar legal challenges if the lawsuit was successful at establishing a legal precedent.

Regardless of the outcome, the lawsuit could cause online video companies to take another look at closed captioning options. Companies like PLYmedia, which offer closed captioning solutions, have long argued that the cost of adding captions is far outweighed by the additional benefits.

Captions add SEO juice because they make it possible to discover video content through search engines, for instance. They also make it easier to consume online video in offices or other settings where following the audio feed isn’t an option even for people that aren’t hearing disabled. Internal research showed that videos with captions are viewed 38 percent longer than videos without, according to a Plymedia spokesperson.

A number of companies have already started to add closed captions to their online video catalog. Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt said in February that 30 percent of content watched by viewers already had subtitles, and the goal is to bring that number up to 80 percent by the end of the year. Hulu also provides captions for part of its catalog. YouTube enables publishers to add captions to their videos, and additionally launched automatic captions for all its videos in early 2010. Most recently, YouTube debuted captioning for live video content.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: The Connected TV Marketplace
• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• Connected Consumer Q1: The Over-the-Top vs. Pay TV Battle Heats Up

Online-exclusive content from big broadcasters is exempt for now, as are any online-only video makers. However, the law includes stipulations to revisit the issue if broadcasters are eventually going to distribute a majority of their programming exclusively online.

Online video platforms like YouTube and Hulu have been ramping up their own efforts to provide closed captions in recent months, and Matt Knopf from the closed captioning technology provider Plymedia told me a few weeks ago that this also makes economic sense. Having transcripts of your video helps search engines to discover your content, which makes captions a natural SEO tool.

The bill was originally passed by the House in late July, with the Senate giving it an unanimous thumbs-up in August. A minor amendment passed the Senate last week, and President Obama has now about two weeks to sign or veto the bill — and it’s virtually certain that he will sign, given the fact that there has been bipartisan support for and no major opposition to the bill.

Image courtesy of Flickr user niceness.

Related content on GigaOm Pro (subscription required):

• Connected Consumer Market Overview, Q2 2010
• Survey: Who Are Those Masked Online Video Viewers
• Hulu vs. Social Video

PCF co-founder Nicholas Reville told me that the group plans to release a first public demo of its tools in four to six weeks. He said that the group received an initial grant from the Mozilla Foundation to build Universal Subtitles, and that it is actively looking for volunteers through Mozilla’s new Drumbeat community.

The PCF has been building a subtitle widget that will allow volunteers to transcribe videos from pretty much any web site, sync them with the video in question and then publish the results online. Universalsubtitles.org will host these subtitles in a Wikipedia-like fashion, complete with different versions for each video and various ways for people to collaborate.

Subtitles will be saved in a format like .srt, which is supported by many video players. Reville told me that the site wants to enhance this with a new protocol that can be used by video players, web sites and various devices to query the Universal Subtitles site or any other subtitle repository and download the correct subtitle in the appropriate format. “We want to work with other organizations to create a new open standard that anyone who hosts subtitles or make a video player can use,” he said.

Universal Subtitles isn’t the only one working on enhancing web video through subtitles. YouTube recently rolled out site-wide closed captions through voice recognition. Reville said that Universal Subtitles can be complementary to YouTube’s efforts. “There are lots of things that speech recognition and machine translation can’t do well now,” he explained, adding that his group is also looking at options to incorporate voice recognition to make human subtitling even easier.

Related content on GigaOm Pro: Connected Consumer Market Overview, Q1 2010 (subscription required)