UKTV’s comedy channel Dave has made a commitment to maximise digital accessibility across its YouTube content, introducing full manual closed captions across the channel.
The Dave YouTube channel is the first major UK broadcaster-run social AVOD channel to provide an accurate subtitling service for all of its videos.
The commitment to improving accessibility is echoed across the wider UKTV network. In the past year, all UKTV channels exceeded Ofcom requirements for audio description and subtitling. UKTV channels include Dave, Gold, Drama, W, Yesterday, Alibi and Eden. Video on demand service, UKTV Play, also provides subtitles for all content on free to access and direct-to-consumer apps.
Previously, Dave YouTube viewers were reliant on automatically generated closed captions provided by YouTube. This can provide a poor viewing experience due to the errors in the resulting transcription.
UKTV achieved full manual subtitle coverage by adapting broadcast subtitles, with additional transcription support from 3Play Media.
22% of Dave YouTube users access the content with subtitles turned on. That’s up from just 5% of users who opted to use the automatically generated captions.
Erina Jones, UKTV’s Head of Social, said:
UKTV is committed to improving accessibility and this is another great step forward. We now have subtitles on 100% of our content across digital AVOD platforms which includes our on demand service, UKTV Play, and now the Dave YouTube channel, which is growing at pace.
[Image: UKTV PR]