Volunteer to Caption Videos

I’ve written a few times before about Universal Subtitles, a great web service that facilitates the crowdsourcing of captions for online videos. (See here and here, for instance.)

Earlier this summer they announced a new initiative to focus the crowd‘s efforts on specific videos: “We’re looking for volunteers to caption and translate videos on our volunteer team page. We’ve curated some fascinating videos from non-profit and educational partners that deserve a global audience. Even if you don’t speak multiple languages you can still help make the video more accessible by creating captions.”

You can donate your time by going straight to their volunteers page and getting to work. Captions make it possible for those who are deaf or hard of hearing to enjoy the benefits of videos, and–if they are translations–they help people who don’t understand the language being spoken in the video but who do understand the language in the captions.

Have you used Universal Subtitles? Alternately, have you used a different tool to caption videos? If so, please share your tips or details of your experience in the comments!

[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by Gruenemann].