'Delightful that Scribit.Pro takes the entire process of video accessibility off our hands from start to finish.'

Together with our customers, we are committed to an accessible future. We therefore find the cooperation with our customers extremely valuable and the personal story of each of our customers extremely important.

In this series, we ask Scribit.Pro customers about their experiences with our service and our services. How do these organizations, authorities and individuals experience the cooperation with our company? What is their digital accessibility strategy and what role does Scribit.Pro play in it? And do they have any tips for others who want to get started with video accessibility?

As a Brabant city with international allure, the municipality of Eindhoven faces a new challenge every day. Communication advisor Marije Vader elaborates on the serving role that the municipality wants to fulfill towards the city and its inhabitants, and why accessibility – and therefore also digital accessibility – is so important in this regard.

The organization

Eindhoven is the fifth largest city in the Netherlands. A city that is still growing considerably, in terms of population, activity and employment. The 'City of Light' is known worldwide as the city of technology and design. Due to the presence of the High Tech Campus, the Technical University, the Design Academy, but also large companies such as Philips and ASML, Brainport Eindhoven is considered one of the smartest regions in the world. The Brabant city is also becoming increasingly international. This growth brings with it all kinds of challenges: how do you keep the city attractive, safe, healthy, accessible and pleasant to live in: in short, future-proof? It is the task of the municipality to work on these issues and to make practical policy for them.

The municipality of Eindhoven is there for the city and all its inhabitants. Residents can go to the City Hall for practical matters regarding relocation, proof of identity or life events such as registering a birth, getting married, etc. The municipality is active in various sectors. The spatial domain is concerned with public space. The social domain ensures that everyone can participate. It includes areas such as housing, work and income, and care for young and old. In addition, there are sectors in security, strategy, economy and culture, finance and ICT, among others. The communication department ensures that all information is understandable to everyone and that the services are accessible to all residents of Eindhoven. The organization sees diversity and inclusion as one of its core values.

Around 2400 people work at the municipality of Eindhoven, spread over four locations in the city. Marije Vader works as a communications consultant. Together with a colleague, she produces all of the municipality's video content. She and her colleague are responsible for both the production process and the direction, and both the editing and the post-processing.

How did the municipality of Eindhoven get started with digital accessibility?

'The municipality started improving its digital accessibility in 2018 because the legal obligation came from the national government. But the municipality of Eindhoven also believes that it has an obligation to all its residents: it believes that its services should be accessible to all Eindhoven residents and that all information and content it offers should be accessible to all these people.

When we started working with accessibility, we brought in an external party in the field of accessibility, who taught us all the ins and outs of accessibility. This has really created awareness in our organization.

Initially, the focus was on the municipality's website, www.eindhoven.nl. A lot of video content can be found there and that is where Scribit.Pro came into play.'

What has Scribit.Pro been able to do for you?

‘All existing videos that can be found on the website have been provided with supporting files by Scribit.Pro. The video content now meets the legal guidelines of the WCAG (the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). The visitor can consult subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, listen to audio description or read or have a transcript read aloud, in which all visual and auditory information from a video can be found.

Now when we create new videos, we already take accessibility into account during the shooting and making process. Thanks to Scribit.Pro's knowledge and expertise, we now know what to look out for when filming and editing a video. For example, there must be enough space in the video to announce a speaker in the audio description. Then it becomes clear to people with a visual impairment who is in the picture and who is speaking. Following feedback from Scribit.Pro, we incorporated all of these considerations into the creation process.

When we have a video ready, we post it on the Scribit.Pro dashboard. Professional image descriptors and subtitlers provide the video with all supporting files within a few days. The municipality of Eindhoven embeds all videos on the website itself, via YouTube. A program on our website ensures that the accessibility files are available to the user.'

How did you come into contact with Scribit.Pro?

‘ReadSpeaker, the world's leading text-to-speech technology company, paired us with Scribit.Pro. We use ReadSpeaker's WebReader, which reads the texts on our website to visitors who have poor eyesight or who cannot read (properly). Because the municipality of Eindhoven wanted a supporting technical tool for all video content on its website, Scribit.Pro turned out to be the ideal party for this.'

‘If you can help a few people by making your content accessible, the whole process will be worth it.’

What does the collaboration with Scribit.Pro look like?

‘The municipality of Eindhoven has a subscription with Scribit.Pro, in combination with a purchased number of minutes, namely 150 minutes.

We completely outsource the video accessibility process to Scribit.Pro. We provide video content and Scribit.Pro ensures that the relevant video is fully supported within a week, or sometimes even within a day, in the form of separate files for each type of support.’

How do you like the collaboration?

‘We are very pleased with the partnership with Scribit.Pro. The service is excellent and the entire process follows a simple and pleasant system. It is very easy to upload video content in the Scribit.Pro dashboard. It is also nice that we automatically receive a notification when a video has been made accessible and is therefore ready for publication.

We are also very pleased with the service: communication is pleasant and clear. Rush orders are always possible in consultation. We have quick answers to questions and the accessible videos are also delivered by Scribit.Pro at a rapid pace.’

Any tips for others who also want to get started with video accessibility?

‘The first step is the most essential: become aware of what digital accessibility means. And more importantly: what digital accessibility means and can mean for your target group, or for people in general. This way you will understand why and for who you are doing it. If you can help a few people by making your content accessible, that makes the whole process worth it.

The road to digital accessibility can be a long road for an organization that takes a lot of time. And that while you remain busy with other things at the same time. But that makes us all the more pleased with our partnership with Scribit.Pro. It is very nice that we have arranged our video accessibility with a single party. An extra plus is that Scribit.Pro takes care of the entire process from start to finish.’