How to Build Accessibility into Your Budget
Updated: September 5, 2024
[Free download] Sources of Grants and Funding for Closed Captioning
For organizations committed to accessibility, we know how important it is to build an efficient and cost-effective budget. Here, we’ve compiled a toolkit of our best strategies to secure buy-in, find funding, and maximize your resources.
Accessibility aides (like closed captions) offer numerous benefits to audience members and content creators alike, including improved SEO, increased engagement, and enhanced comprehension. Most importantly, it ensures millions of people around the globe – with and without disabilities – can access and benefit from your content.
Despite these enticing advantages, allocating the necessary resources to making content accessible can be a challenge. Whether you’re facing limited budget or a lack of buy-in, we know how to budget for accessibility at any level.
Securing buy-in for accessibility
In our 2024 State of Captioning report, 30% of respondents said that budget was the biggest barrier in closed captioning their content. While there may be advocates within an organization, they’re not always the final decision maker.
In order to build a compelling case for an accessibility budget, it’s crucial to effectively communicate the value of these initiatives.
Raising awareness
The first step in securing buy-in for accessibility is to raise awareness of its importance. Educational efforts within your organization may take the form of workshops, lunch-and-learn sessions, or internally circulation of informative videos and blog posts. 
Consider using experiential learning techniques to illustrate first-hand the challenges faced by individuals with disabilities. For example, this could be as simple as having colleagues close their eyes during a TV show to replicate the experience of a blind viewer, or ask them to watch a movie without sound, relying only on captions to better understand the viewer experience as a d/Deaf or hard of hearing person.
Exercises like this can foster a deeper understanding of the need for accessible media, and the impact on user experience without it.
Demonstrate the return on investment
To get decision-makers on board, it’s essential to present the tangible benefits of accessibility. A detailed presentation should include the following points:
- Enhanced engagement: captions have the power to improve brand recall and memorability, ultimately supporting video-based success metrics and KPIs.
- Improved comprehension: captions have been proven to increase video comprehension for second language learners and native speakers alike.
- Legal compliance: organizations from Netflix to FedEx to Harvard have faced legal challenges over inaccessible video. Investing in access upfront paves a clear path for your content to be compliant.
- Boosted SEO: videos that include closed captions are preferable to search algorithms, often leading to view count increases
- Higher brand value: accessibility not only opens untapped customer markets but also promotes inclusion, ensuring all users can engage with your content.
Petition a pilot program
For organizations hesitant to fully commit to a new initiative, a pilot program can serve as valuable testing grounds.
By allocating a small budget to caption a select number of videos, you can measure the concentrated impact of accessibility on key performance indicators like view count, search engine ranking, and site traffic. Comparing the performance of captioned versus uncaptioned videos will provide concrete, quantitative evidence of the value of accessibility.
Funding accessibility initiatives
Obtaining the necessary funding for accessibility can be challenging, but several avenues are available to supplement and support these efforts. 
Applying for grants
Federal grants, like those offered through the U.S. Department of Education’s Educational Technology, Media, and Materials for Individuals with Disabilities Program, provide substantial funding for accessibility initiatives. These grants can be used to support accommodations like closed captioning and audio description.
Additionally, the Distance Education Captioning and Transcription (DECT) Grant offers reimbursement for captioning costs incurred by California Community Colleges. This grant can be used to cover expenses related to captioning and other student accommodations, and 3Play Media is a pre-approved vendor – so implementation is (almost) seamless.
Explore alternative funding sources
Some organizations may consider creating an internal accessibility grant, reallocating funds from other budgets, or seeking external funding through tax credits, crowdfunding, or private donations.
Maximize your existing budget
Once buy-in and funding have been secured, it’s crucial to maximize the impact of your accessibility budget. The following strategies may help you achieve this goal:
- Prioritize quality: while low-cost options may seem appealing, they often result in lower quality output, leading to potential inaccuracies and incurred costs for corrections. Choose a vendor that’s dedicated to delivering high-quality results the first round – reducing the need for revisions.
- Planning ahead: organizations that anticipate high volumes of service needs should take advantage of bulk discounts when possible. 3Play offers discounts on bulk orders and extended turnaround times, which allows organizations to plan and budget more effectively for longer-term projects.
Leverage technology for cost savings
When determining how to build a budget for accessibility services, it’s most important to prioritize quality and accuracy. A solution designed to deliver consistent, high-quality results from the outset will ultimately save your organization more time and money in the long run.
At 3Play, we leverage best-in-class ASR technology with our network of highly skilled captioners to provide premium media accessibility and localization services. Our human-in-the-loop approach ensures 99% accuracy, even with poor audio quality or complex subject matter, to deliver reliable results at a lower cost.
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