Jackie share some great advice to make your video content more Inclusive.
People watch more than a billion hours of video content on YouTube every day, with many LGBTQ creators using the platform in a positive way to spread their messages to a wide audience. However, for anyone wishing to create accessible video content for the transgender community, it’s important to consider what makes content truly inclusive, avoiding serious issues like unintentional misgendering. From using all-inclusive language to adding accessible features while editing, here are just a few basics that will ensure your videos are as trans-inclusive as possible.
The importance of using inclusive language
Planning ahead before filming is essential in order to ensure that you’re creating accessible content for everyone within the trans community. One major way to achieve this is by using inclusive language in the video. Using the correct pronouns when referring to others in the video itself (or when talking about individuals within the community), ensures you’re creating content that is respectful and inclusive to everyone involved. While this, along with using gender-neutral pronouns when necessary, allows you to avoid misgendering someone by mistake, it’s also equally as important to avoid terms like «preferred pronouns» or «female/male bodied», which may unintentionally offend some viewers. This further ensures that you’re conveying respect and inclusivity through the language you use in the video, and by planning ahead of time to use inclusive language, you can rehearse and review footage beforehand to ensure you’ve achieved the goal.
Focusing on cultural diversity
Representing cultural diversity within your content can further ensure that it’s accessible to everyone. For example, if you were to create a video project centred around transgender awareness, perhaps for International Transgender Day of Visibility, it’s important to show a diverse representation of people from all cultural backgrounds and have a diverse team involved in the video making process. 39% of LGBTQ adults identify as people of colour. From filming to editing and appearing on screen, including as much cultural diversity as possible allows you to create content that is not only inclusive to a wide audience of trans people, but also cultivates an inclusive environment that recognises the full spectrum of diversity.
Further accessibility through editing
It’s essential to realise that there are a number of helpful features that can be added to your video through the editing process, all of which can further aid in ensuring your video is accessible as possible to everyone in the transgender community. For example, adding captions or subtitles to your videos is an excellent way to make them more accessible to those who are also part of the deaf community. Those who don’t speak the language used in your video fluently can also benefit from subtitles, as they can aid greatly in language comprehension. However, it’s essential to do this with care, as it’s important to keep captions on the screen for an adequate amount of time, and that they’re in a high contrast colour (so as not to blend in with the background).
Adding other useful features — such as embedding links to other content at the end of yours — is yet another way to make your content much more accessible. Putting links in the description to trans-friendly resources, such as charitable organisations, blogs, or social media accounts of LGBTQ influencers that you mentioned in the video, are additional things to consider. This collects all resources into one place for viewers to refer to after watching your video.
Creating well thought out video content that is highly accessible to the transgender community can be done throughout the whole creation process. From creating a master plan before you even begin to adding helpful features like captions and embedded links during the editing process, you’re sure to create thoughtful, inclusive, and accessible content for all.
