By SongTools.ai
Deaf and Hard of Hearing people love music too, and a few simple steps make your releases open to them: official lyrics, captions, lyric videos, visualizers and a written description of how your song feels.
Deaf and Hard of Hearing people go to shows, follow artists and share songs they love. Many of them experience music through vibration, lyrics, visuals and sign language. If your release only works for people who can hear every detail, you are leaving fans out.
The good news: most of what makes music accessible is cheap or free, and it helps everyone. Captions help people watching with the sound off. Lyrics help non native speakers. A good description helps playlist curators.
Lyrics are the first thing many Deaf and Hard of Hearing fans look for. Services like Musixmatch let verified artists add official lyrics, sync them to the music and send them to platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and Instagram. Some distributors also let you submit lyrics when you upload a release.
If you don't have your lyrics written down, our Lyrics Transcriber turns the vocals in your track into text you can clean up and publish.
Every music video, behind the scenes clip and live video should have real captions, not just automatic ones. Include the lyrics, and also describe the important sounds: [crowd cheering], [beat drops], [soft piano]. YouTube and most social platforms let you upload or edit captions yourself.
A lyric video puts the words on screen in time with the song. A visualizer shows the music moving. Both give Deaf and Hard of Hearing fans a way to follow along, and both are easy wins on YouTube and social media.
ASL music videos have a real history. D-PAN, the Deaf Professional Arts Network co-founded by the Deaf hip hop artist Sean Forbes, has made ASL music videos for songs by artists including John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Eminem and Imagine Dragons. If you make one, work with Deaf performers and interpreters, and pay them.
This is the step almost nobody takes. Lyrics tell people what a song says. They don't tell them how it feels: whether it is tense or joyful, where it builds, where the big moment lands. A few sentences in your video description or on your website can give Deaf and Hard of Hearing fans that missing layer.
You can start with Mood & Emotion, which reads the emotional arc of your track and where it shifts, and Describe a Song, which writes out the instruments, energy and structure. Edit the results into your own words. A Spectrogram image of your song is another way to show its shape.
If you play live, ask the venue whether it provides ASL interpreters and say so in your show announcements. Let Deaf fans know where they can stand to feel the music and see the stage.
SongTools.ai was built for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people first, so they can read what any song feels like. If you are a Deaf or Hard of Hearing music maker, you can apply for free access.
All the tools discussed in this article are available on SongTools.ai, free to explore.