The Association of the Deaf in Finland has been producing video content since the VHS days. Today, they're creating online video for a sizeable audience.
To people living with any kind of hearing impairment, video can be appreciated way beyond its entertainment value. For The Association of the Deaf in Finland, video communication is a key factor in reaching their target audience.
“Sign language is essential to us, and since sign language can’t be written down… video is extremely important”, says Riitta Vivolin-Karén.
Riitta Vivolin-Karén & Jari Nyberg, Kuurojen Liitto
The Finnish Association for the Deaf is an internationally renowned organisation that works to improve living situations for deaf people in Finland, and other countries around the world. Riitta Vivolin-Karén and Jari Nyberg work with media and video production at the Kuurojen Liitto library of sign language.
The association has been working with video production, specifically, for a long time. First, with VHS production, then DVD, and now they’re experts on producing and distributing online video content for a deaf audience, using the Qbrick Video Platform.
See their story here:
Advocating for their language and reaching a larger audience.
“A good example of the significance that online storage has had when it comes to distributing our videos is the 2009 deaflympics in Taipei,” explains Riitta.
She continues:
“There are around 2000-3000 deaf people using sign language in Finland. But the related sports videos were clicked almost 92 000 times in a week.”
Since their switch from analog video to online video distribution with Qbrick Video Platform, they’ve been able to reach a much larger and international audience.
Kuurojen Liitto make sure to prioritise their deaf audience, since their main goal is to advocate for them and give them valuable video content.
“We normally add subtitles to the videos for hearing people. But on our videos we advocate our language.” says Jari Nyberg.
Jari goes on to explain how working with the Qbrick Video Platform has made things easier for them
“It’s just that easy. It’s easy to access, easy to upload videos, and everybody gets to see the videos easily”, Jari says.
When asked about future plans with video and Qbrick, Riitta says that she wants to explore live videos. She wants to explore interactivity within live videos and events, to reach even higher engagement with their audience.
“That would be our grand vision for the future”.
To access the Association of the Deaf’s video archive, you need to login to an account on their site. This is where you can find them.