Expert User Opinions on "Automatic Captioning"
Sun, Aug. 9th, 2020 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jesse_the_k posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
access_fandomMerylKEvans is a Deaf digital marketing professional — she’s been online since 1993, and she’s been on countless video calls. Here’s her take on the best in automatic speech recognition-driven captions, as of 22 April 2020:
https://meryl.net/best-automatic-captioning-tool-for-video-calls
Sadly, there’s no handy tl;dr recommendation.
For one-on-one calls, Meryl — who speaks for herself and describes herself as a strong lipreader — had the best luck with Google Meet. She dives deep into the vexed question of how to get a meeting’s audio directed to the captioning software when you’ve plugged in your microphone to participate in the meeting.
For autocaptioning video events, there’s no clear winner as summarized at the end of Meryl’s article.
Meryl mentions this site spun up in response to the pandemic by two professionals who rely on captioning. They also declare no winner, while providing lots of links to more resources.
http://connect-hear.com/article-categories/captioning
Meryl’s made hundreds of YouTube videos, including this pungent 42-second opinion on whether autocaptions are better than none:
Transcript copied from her YouTube channel:
Captions #ValueIn30: This is the second most important rule of great captions
The first rule of great captions is readability. If someone can't read the captions, then none of the other rules matter.
The second rule of great captions is accuracy 🎯 They capture everything said and heard. Including bad words.
Why should people with the sound off and deaf people get a sanitized version of the audio? Exactly. They shouldn't.
Automatic captions are not better than no captions.
Yes, deaf people can tell when the captions are not accurate.
That's why we call them autocraptions. According to a 3PlayMedia report, autocraptions can have accuracy rates as low as 50 percent https://www.3playmedia.com/2019/04/23/automatic-captions-helping-hindering-students/. That's beyond unacceptable.
When the captions fumble, people stop watching the video. It's not worth the hassle or frustration to get a partial story.
Thank you for accurately captioning your videos. When you upload them, please add #Captioned so we can find it!
👀 Eye-popping moment: YouTube automatically captioned this video ... in DUTCH!