Adding Videos with Subtitles

It is important for your content, and especially videos, to be universally accessible. This chapter outlines some methods to achieve this.

Amara

You will need a self-hosted WordPress installation (as opposed to Wordpress.com hosting) in order to insert Universal Subtitles videos into your content.You will also need to be either an Administrator or Editor as you will need those permissions to add the embed code to your site.

Amara, created by the Participatory Culture Foundation¹ , is a toolkit that makes it easy to add subtitles to any video on the web. Universal Subtitles uses only web standard technologies, specifically HTML5 and JavaScript, so it will be accessible in nearly every browser.

 

To subtitle a video for Amara, your video first needs to be online. You can upload it to a hosting site such as Youtube, Blip.tv, Dailymotion or Vimeo. Of if you have enough server space you can upload it as a file attachment to the Media part of your WordPress site. Universal Subtitles can work with Ogg, WebM, flv and mp4 video files. 

Once the video is uploaded, visit: http://universalsubtitles.org/videos/create

At the Amara site, enter the location of the video and begin the process of transcribing. The interface is designed to simplify the transcription process by breaking it down into small tasks. 

Once your video is uploaded and subtitled, it is easy to insert your video into any WordPress page or post² .

1. First, copy the JavaScript code from the video page at http://universalsubtitles.org.
   
2. Next, create or edit a page or post from the Dashboard of your WordPress site. 
3. Once you are viewing the page or post edit screen, click the HTML tab. 
4. Paste the JavaScript code into the HTML edit area.
5. Publish/update the page or post.

You will now have a subtitled video that is accessible to most, or all, of your visitors!

1. http://pculture.org^{^}
2. You need a self-hosted WordPress installation in order to insert JavaScript code into a post or page.^{^}