On December 31, Abigail Heringer from The Bachelor shared an inspiring video on Instagram to promote the use of closed captioning on media content. Heringer has been in the Bachelor Nation for about a year now and she has actively been using her newfound fame to help spread the word and educate others about being hearing impaired. She was first in season 25 of The Bachelor where she opened up to Matt James about how she wears a cochlear implant due to her hearing loss. After being sent home in week 7, she went on to be a participant for season 7 of Bachelor in Paradise, where she met Noah Erb. Although they ended their relationship on the show, they have reconnected since and slowly found a way to make it all work.
After sharing her story with all of Bachelor Nation, Abigail opened up even more through an Instagram post on December 13. There were multiple images of her showing off her cochlear implant followed by a caption expressing her gratitude for all the support she's gotten sharing her story. "When I first got the call saying that they wanted to cast me for The Bachelor, I called my mom in a panic," Heringer wrote. "I was excited but also so scared and unsure if I wanted to talk about my hearing loss on tv, especially on a show that hasn't had much disability representation." She went on to talk about how it took 26 years for her to gain the confidence to share her story and now that she started she's not going to stop.
Just a couple weeks after that post, Abigail Heringer shared a video asking content creators to put closed captioning on their media to make it more accessible to the hard-of-hearing community. Adding captions to their videos not only helps those who need it, but also helps to increase social media engagement. The Bachelor alum asked her followers, both non-deaf and hard-of-hearing, if they're more likely to watch content if it has closed captioning. "94% said yes," she said. "So if you aren't putting close captions on your videos, not only are you not making your content widely accessible, but you're actually losing out on views and engagement on content that you worked really hard on."
Once she talked about how important it is to have captions, she went on to share tips on how to best do so. "Instagram stories and TikToks can be captioned through the app, but for longer videos the top recommended captioning app was Mix Captions." Abigail also expressed that the biggest frustration for those that are hard-of-hearing is not only the lack of captioning but also the errors in the captioning. After revealing that she's guilty of occasionally posting a video before checking the captioning, she expressed how important it is to take the extra step and make sure it's 100% correct. Heringer captioned her video by saying, "It makes your content much more accessible for a group that relies on captioning AND our hearing peers have even said they prefer captioning to none. A win win!"
Closed captioning is an extremely important part of content creation because it allows all individuals to fully experience the video program despite their level of hearing. Abigail Heringer has been voicing her concerns and sharing her story in the hopes that it could affect even just one person's life. When she posted about her hesitance of going on the show due to her hearing loss, she mentioned how her mom helped make the decision easy. "...so when my mom said 'if sharing your story can help just one person, one family, you should do it', that's all it took for me to say yes."
Source: Abigail Heringer/Instagram