Instructions for Making Your Work Accessible

In order to make our journal accessible to all readers, we require that individuals submitting either audiovisual content or content that includes a language other than English, also include either captions, a transcript, or both.

If you do not provide a transcript or captions, we cannot publish your work. The following instructions will help us ensure that the captioning or transcription is fully accessible to all our readers.

We also ask all contributors of text-only written work submit a high-quality audio recording of the work and any affiliated text (author bios, etc.) upon acceptance. Details on this follow the instructions for transcripts and captions. 

Transcript

1. Please use a sans serif font.

2. Include the speakers’ names. You may use the full names of the speakers for the first time they speak, and then change to their last names thereafter. 

3. Include all speech content, relevant information about the speech, and relevant non-speech information. Relevant speech and non-speech information should be included in brackets. Some examples:

Example #1: Joe: “The man jumped off the building!” [shouting]

Example #2: Jane: “We’re almost there, but—” [car crashing into a telephone pole]

4. Finally, please add navigational tools that will enable us and our readers to access the document easily, including headings, and a description of the setting and characters, if the content is video. Again, please include clarifying information about both, audio and visual information.

Note: For most “talking head” videos, a transcript with an image description of the speakers will suffice. However, if you’re not sure whether or not to include visual information, please let us know and we will help you make sure that your content is as accessible as possible. As a general rule, it’s better to include more information than less.

Be aware that your transcript may be edited to conform with our style guidelines.

Captions

If your work is a video, then you must include either captions or a transcript (although we prefer both). We do not accept automatic captioning.

1. Please use YouTube’s video manager to add captions to your video. You will need to put them in a .txt file. You can read the full instructions on YouTube’s help page. 

2. Keep each line short (about seven to twelve words per line) and make sure they are double-spaced.

3. Capitalize the first letter of each line. This may feel awkward to you, but it will provide clarity to viewers.

4. Please ignore conventional grammar rules when conveying speech—caption only what is said.

5. Don’t worry about punctuation marks such as periods and commas, but do include question marks and apostrophes in contractions.

You may find this video tutorial helpful.

Audio

The audio recording should be made as an MP3 file in a quiet space with minimal echo on a digital recorder and sent to us in advance of the issue's publication. If possible, the recording should be made in stereo, not mono.

The audio recording of the work will be used to provide access for each issue; with the contributor's consent, the audio version of the work may appear in promotional material for the issue or for the magazine. 

Thank you for your commitment to accessibility, and if you have any questions or comments about these instructions, please let us know. Contact us at thedeafpoetssociety@gmail.com.