Updated: October 26, 2026
Accessible nonprofit video in Miami: captions, audio description, plain language and reaching people with disabilities
A nonprofit's video is supposed to reach everyone the mission serves, and a meaningful share of them cannot see it, hear it or follow it as made. Roughly one in four adults in the United States lives with a disability; in Miami-Dade, with an older population and a large number of people for whom English is a second language, the share of any audience who need captions, description or plainer language is higher than most organisations assume. Accessibility is also a legal question for organisations that receive public funds or serve the public, and a funder question, since many grants now ask. Mostly, though, it is a mission question: a video about services for seniors that seniors with hearing loss cannot follow has failed at its own purpose. This guide covers what accessible video means in practice, what each measure costs, how to build it into production rather than bolting it on, and where a Miami nonprofit should start.
The measures, and who they serve
| Measure | Who it serves | What it involves | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Closed captions | Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers; people watching without sound; second-language viewers | Accurate, synchronised text of speech and meaningful sounds, as a selectable track and burned-in for social | Low; human correction of an automated draft |
| Transcript | Screen reader users; people who prefer reading; search | Full text of the video published alongside it | Very low once captions exist |
| Audio description | Blind and low-vision viewers | A narration track describing essential visual content in the pauses, or an extended version that pauses the video | Moderate; a writer and a voice, or a scripted narration built into the main edit |
| Sign language interpretation | Deaf viewers whose first language is ASL | An interpreter recorded and composited into a corner of the frame, or a separate version | Moderate; interpreter fee and edit time |
| Plain language | People with cognitive or learning disabilities; second-language viewers; everyone | Short sentences, common words, one idea per sentence, no jargon, key points repeated on screen | None; a writing discipline |
| Visual design | Low-vision viewers; colour-blind viewers; people with photosensitive conditions | High-contrast text, large on-screen type, no information carried by colour alone, no flashing | None if planned; a graphics rule |
| Accessible player and page | Screen reader and keyboard users | A player with keyboard controls and caption support; the page describes the video | Platform choice; most major players comply |
Building it in, not bolting it on
Every measure is cheaper and better when it is decided before the shoot.
- Script for the ear and the eye together. If the narration says what the picture shows ("Maria arrives at the clinic on Calle Ocho"), a blind viewer follows without description and a deaf viewer follows with captions. Integrated description written into the script is the most effective accessibility measure and costs nothing.
- Put the key facts in speech and on screen. A phone number shown only as a graphic is invisible to a blind viewer; a number said only aloud is lost to a deaf one. Do both.
- Interview for clarity. Ask interviewees to say the name of the program and the place; it gives the captioner and the describer what they need and gives every viewer context.
- Design graphics to the standard. Lower thirds in large type with contrast, no text over busy images, no colour-only meaning, no strobing transitions.
- Leave room. Audio description needs pauses in the narration; an edit cut wall-to-wall with speech leaves nowhere for it. A few seconds of ambience between sections is good storytelling anyway.
The consent and dignity practices in our note on consent and dignity when filming include a point about accessibility: a participant with a disability should be able to review the video in a form they can access before it is published.
Captions in Miami: the language question
Captions in the spoken language are the baseline. For a Miami nonprofit the spoken language is often Spanish or Haitian Creole, or switches within an interview, and automated captioning handles Spanish adequately and Creole poorly. A human captioner who knows the community's speech is needed for anything with a mission in it. Subtitles in the other languages then follow from the caption file; the approach is described in our guide to multilingual nonprofit video. Deliver captions as files (SRT or VTT) for every platform that accepts them and as burned-in text for social, where most viewers have the sound off anyway.
Audio description done affordably
Standard audio description adds a narrator's voice describing the visuals in the gaps, mixed into a separate audio track that the viewer selects. It works for videos with pauses and fails for fast-cut social content. For a nonprofit, three affordable routes exist: write the description into the main narration from the start (the integrated approach above); produce a described version with a volunteer or staff voice reading a script prepared by the editor; or use an extended-description version where the video pauses while the description plays, which is simple to build and acceptable to most viewers who need it. Publish the described version alongside the main one with a clear label; a viewer who needs it will find it.
Legal and funder expectations
Organisations receiving federal funds, public agencies and their contractors, and public accommodations are subject to accessibility requirements that, in current practice, mean captions for all published video and audio description for content where the visuals carry the message; the technical reference is WCAG 2.1 at level AA, which the federal rules and most state and local governments now cite. Many foundations and corporate funders ask about accessibility in applications and reports. A nonprofit does not need a lawyer to decide to caption everything and describe what matters; it needs a policy, a line in the video budget, and a producer who does it by default. The measures also fit inside a tight budget, as our note on producing nonprofit video on a tight budget shows: captions and plain language cost almost nothing, and description costs less than a reshoot.
Where to start
- Caption everything, with human correction, and publish transcripts.
- Write the next script so the narration describes what matters on screen.
- Fix the graphics template for contrast and size.
- Describe the flagship video for the year, integrated or extended.
- Ask the people you serve who have disabilities to review a video and tell you what fails.
Accessible video from our team
Every video we produce for a Miami nonprofit ships with human-corrected captions in the spoken language, a transcript, and graphics built to contrast and size standards, and we write narration so that the visual story is carried in the words. Audio description, ASL interpretation and Spanish or Haitian Creole caption and subtitle versions are quoted as lines on the estimate so a funder can see them, and we recommend which of them a given video needs. If your organisation serves people with disabilities, receives public funding, or simply wants its video to reach the whole community, tell us on the contact page and we will plan the measures into the production; our approach to mission-driven work is on the about page.
