Videos on Hwb

Introduction

You must contact the Hwb content team as early as possible to discuss your video project.

Any video published on our websites must meet:

Welsh language standards

To meet the Welsh language standards, the Welsh language must not be treated less favourably when making videos. This usually means producing video content in Welsh and English.

For case study videos, the first step, always, should be to seek out bilingual participants, so that Welsh and English videos can be produced. Otherwise, 2 separate case studies of equal merit in both languages can be produced.

These videos should have captions in the spoken language.

Copyright

All videos must comply with copyright laws. This will include:

ensuring relevant permissions are obtained before creating a video if possible, or if not before publication
not identifying schools or learners if you don’t have the permission to do so
creating videos in a suitable location ensuring no trademarked items or sensitive information are visible in the background

Accessibility

For each video project, think of your audience and what would work best for them.

You must remember that not all users will have access to audio. As well as providing transcripts all videos must use closed captions.

Transcripts

You must provide a transcript of the words spoken in any video being published. The transcript should not be a translation of what is said. The transcript should be provided as an SRT timestamp file.

Closed captions

Closed captioning is time-synchronized text that reflects an audio track. It can be read while watching visual content. The process of closed captioning involves:

transcribing the audio to text
dividing that text into chunks known as ‘caption frames’
synchronizing the caption frames with the video

Like transcripts captions should match the spoken language of the video. You should not use them for translation purposes.

Subtitles must not be added to the video image. The YouTube closed captions tool should be used instead. Transcripts should be provided as an SRT timestamp file type.

British Sign Language (BSL)

The accessibility and language requirements for videos in BSL will be different. These videos will need to be discussed with the Hwb content team.

Transcripts

For videos in BSL, the transcript will need to be timed by a professional interpreter.

Captions

BSL videos aimed at fluent BSL users do not need captions. If videos are about BSL in general, they will need captions.

Sending video files

Depending on the size of your video files you may need to send us your project without using Outlook.

Videos can be sent via:

Dropbox
WeTransfer
Google Docs
Vimeo

Publishing videos

All videos must be hosted on YouTube before being published on Hwb.

This could be hosted either on your own or our YouTube channels and will be discussed once the request is received.

YouTube requirements

The following information must be provided along with the video for uploading to YouTube:

video title: limited to 100 characters (including spaces). Bilingual videos must have a bilingual title
video description: a brief summary explaining what the video is about. Must be provided bilingually (up to 5000 characters)
video transcript

Timescales

You must submit the final videos at least 5 days before the publication date. Additional time will be needed if your video needs further checks by the Hwb content team.

More time may also be needed depending on:

the number of videos to be published
video length

Example of good practice

Further advice on when videos should be used and how to make them accessible is available on GOV.WALES.