When Ned and I started Meet The Mayhems, we wanted to make a porn website that reflected our sexuality on our terms and was welcoming and accessible to our desired audience. We believe that accessibility is vital but with a two person team running the entire show from the back to the front we’re far from perfect. Accessibility is about a lot of different things all at once and there is no finite finish line of accessibility. It is a never ending process and we put in our work to check our own perspective/privilege and consider the needs of different people who might be on the hunt for the erotic content we enjoy making.
On a technical level, accessibility is about making sure that the website itself is viewable to people with a diverse array of operating systems, browsers, and internet connection speeds. Between the two of us, there’s still a lot of work to be accomplished on that front. Often times it is work that you may not see because your OS, browser, and connection makes everything 100% visible, clear, and relatively easy to navigate. That’s awesome! We also want to make sure that someone with different resources can also get there and to do so means staring at hundreds of lines of code to identify glitches and broaden our technical accessibility.
Keywords and vocabulary are another part of accessibility. Even if the video or photos are super sexy and hot to a given audience, the language associated with the content might be a major turn off to some folks. While we are fully aware that no matter what we do, the art and science of attraction means that we won’t ever be able to get everyone off sexually. We also want to keep our language in check to make sure that we aren’t using language abusive to experiences that are not our own. It’s a fine line to walk: we have to contend with the likes of the anti-porn legions who believe that depicting a naked and sexual woman is oppressive in and of itself and as well as legitimate criticisms about our own blind spots.
One area we want to put time and effort into it is closed captioning for anyone who would like to know what is being said but cannot hear it for whatever reason. Sometimes our sound sucks because we don’t have external microphones, sometimes having the sound on is a liability to your porn watching, and some folks hear sound differently or not at all. We are looking for volunteers to help transcribe our porn. We’re looking for just a few people to help us out on this front because we don’t have very much yet but we will be putting out lots of new content.
If you want to check out our porn and can lend a hand writing down the dialogue word for word, send us an email: info@meetthemayhems.com. We’ll set you up with a lifetime membership to the website in exchange for your hard work. For those who have a name they would like credited, please let us know. If you have your own website or blog we’ll help get you setup with an affiliate account as well if you’re interested. Thanks for your interest and pass on the good word!
It’s great to see producers like you not only aiming to continually improve accessibility, but talking about it, too. If I wasn’t neck-deep in prepping my own site for launch right now I’d volunteer like a shot. Subtitles aren’t something I’ve had time for so far either but it’s been in my mind for a while as something I’d like to do if I can. As you say, not only for the hearing impaired but also for those who don’t speak English as a first language and for the convenience of viewers who prefer to turn the sound down anyway.
Best of luck finding volunteers to help you do this valuable work! And kudos for kickstarting a conversation and raising awareness into the bargain.