A recent problem with my headphones got me wondering why online videos like those on YouTube do not have subtitles like many programmes on TV. One answer is that the commercial case is clear on TV – subtitling firms provide the service to TV stations for a fee. On the net the videos are mostly user generated and/or submitted so who pays for subtitling. The answer? Advertisers.

What I am proposing is either a service that employs people to write up subtitles for online video or a mashup (of a wiki and one or several online video sites) that allows users to write up subtitles for each video. The product could be in the form of a widget that runs directly on the online video sites. Each video with subtitles would offer a ‘Subtitles’ option, which when clicked upon would display the relevant subtitles for the video. Whenever subtitles are displayed, the online video site could be required to pay a fixed fee to the subtitling widget provider or pay a share of the ad revenue generated from the video.

This could also be offered as a feature offered directly by the online video sites themselves in the service of their hearing-impaired members.  In this case, the crowdsourcing of subtitles would seem the best option, perhaps with the promise of revenue share with participating users.