Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Ma’ayan Plaut, who is the growth marketing manager at 3play media. They discuss what it means to create accessible and compliant podcast transcripts. Ma’ayan recently tweeted about the need for transcripts to include non-speech elements. Her tweet was instructive and contained practical information for podcast publishers. We expand upon her thread in this conversation, and go beyond it as well. We are moving towards a world in which we don’t simply consume podcasts by listening. Consumers will read podcast content, too; whether that’s because they prefer to read it or because they are d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing, or for a variety of other reasons. For those use-cases, and more, we need to find a way to make transcripts for available and accessible.

Listen for:

• Statistics on how many people are consuming podcasts via transcripts
• How publishers can prioritize creating transcripts beyond just in the initial editing process
• Discussion as to which lawsuits have impacted this discussion
• How to dissect important legislation that regulates accessibility requirements for media creators

Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: transcripts should be vetted by a human. Even if AI gets us halfway there, it’s important to have the final version looked over by a real human. Why? Names like Ma’ayan Plaut and even Arielle Nissenblatt very rarely get AI transcribed the right way.

Links:

• Ma’ayan Plaut
• 3Play Media
• Paul F. Tompkins’ Tweet
• The Download
• Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles
• SquadCast

Credits:

• Hosted by Bryan Barletta
• Hosted by Arielle Nissenblatt
• Audio engineering and transcriptions by Ian Powell
• Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media
• Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews
• Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron

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