Access Fandom

Finally! Why It’s Harder to Hear Dialogue These Days

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 18:28:55 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

The 20 Thousand Hertz podcast dives deep into Why is movie dialogue so hard to understand?, providing six possible reasons why more and more people are turning on subtitles/captions for movies, TV, and the streaming services we use to watch them. Reason six comes with a solution!

Dallas Taylor, 20k.org’s founder, points out video games have solved this problem: most permit users to individually adjust the loudness settings for

music
sound effects
dialogue

Movie sound, on the other hand, is designed to be impressive in a great big theater. But of course most of us watch the screen sector’s output at home.

https://www.20k.org/episodes/subtitleson has both the 30-minute audio and a transcript

I’m a big fan of this podcast, which is often disability-adjacent. In its nine years, it's covered how artists shape sound to convey meaning, how manufacturers tune their devices to be friendly, and how Beethoven created great music when he couldn’t hear at all.

Not surprisingly, many fans work with sound. Taylor solicited listener-produced contributions; I enjoyed the sixteen he chose. The overall winner celebrates the sonic scrapbook a Canadian sound designer keeps of his blind son’s upbringing, and introduces generational delight to the stop announcements on the Montreal transit system.

Accessibility Issue: I couldn’t open the SquareSpace transcript window using my tab key (crucial for those of us who don’t use mice) so I hope this highlight link to the control opens the transcript—let know about trouble/solutions in the comments.

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short film: Judy-Lynn del Rey "The Galaxy Gal"

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 22:29:35 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

This brief documentary introduced me to a disabled hero I’d never known. Del Rey edited and published the science fiction and fantasy I loved growing up.

Explore the story of a woman with dwarfism who revolutionized the world of science fiction by editing and publishing books from sci-fi writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick. See how science fiction narratives offer a more inclusive and equitable lens through which to redefine disability.

It’s part of RENEGADES, five stories of disabled artists from U.S. public broadcasting’s American Masters series: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/

I appreciate that Lachi, the blind host, includes realistic assessments of the current state of access in SF as well as some aspirational "this is the world that’s open to everyone."

The film is available in three flavors with different access strategies —

as broadcast: with closed captions and closed audio description, runtime 12:52 https://www.pbs.org/video/judy-lynn-del-rey-3q6lsp/
on-screen ASL plus open captions, runtime 12:52 https://www.pbs.org/video/judy-lynn-del-rey-the-galaxy-gal-asl-oc-yfedu4/
larger captions and open audio description, runtime 15:35 https://www.pbs.org/video/judy-lynn-del-rey-the-galaxy-gal-extended-audio-description-oc-rkf6ic/

SF/F scholar Dennis Wilson Wise, who’s interviewed in the documentary, has more to say: https://theconversation.com/the-woman-who-revolutionized-the-fantasy-genre-is-finally-getting-her-due-240198

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RestFest Film Festival 15-22 August 2024

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 18:16:23 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

Creating on Crip Time, the restfestfilmfestival.org runs August 15-22, 2024.

It's a by-us, for-us event. They're prioritizing access--including

low- and zero-cost passes
wide open schedule encourages attending from bed
captions (no sign language)
audio description
video on demand provides a 7-day window 15-22 August to unlock a screening, and then 7 more days to once unlocked to actually watch it
content warnings

among other considerations https://www.restfestfilmfestival.org/accessibility

More details ( Read more... )

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Whether, why, and how to use Whisper to transcribe speech

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 21:36:12 GMT

Posted by: brainwane

Whisper, from OpenAI, is an open source speech recognition tool that also does translation. You can try it right now at https://replicate.com/openai/whisper or install it on your own computer to run privately. You provide an audio file, and it emits a text transcript as well as .srt and .vtt subtitle files.

This is a really useful (and free!) tool. I have started using it regularly to make transcripts and captions/subtitles, and I just wrote a blog post to share how, and why -- plus my reflections on the ethics of using it and similar tools trained using machine learning.

Note that it works on existing files, but does not work for live-transcribing an event as it's happening.

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20-23 October Superfest Online Disability Film Festival

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 16:30:01 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

Since 1970, Superfest Disability Film Festival has celebrated cinema that portrays disability through a diverse, unabashed and engaging lens. They’re resuming in-person screenings and continuing the online options that began in 2020.

October 20th-23rd USA pacific time zone https://time.is/pt

They’ve made online watching easier:

12:01am PT on Thursday October 20 until 11:59pm PT on Sunday October 23! Once you begin a screening, you will have 96 additional hours to finish so just make sure to sign in by Sunday night.

Sliding scale passes $0 - $50. They also offer "watch party" options.

https://www.superfestfilm.com/2022-virtual

Out of the twenty films on the schedule:
https://www.superfestfilm.com/2022-films
I’m really excited for these eight — descriptions copied from that link

( open for cool video )

Anyone up for a watch party?

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SuperFest 2021: Disability Film Festival 16-18th October

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 18:48:19 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

Hosted by the Paul Longmore Institute at SF State University, Superfest 2021 is again online Friday October 16th through Sunday October 18th 2021. Donations accepted but not required.

Check out the blurbs for all 22 films:

https://www.superfestfilm.com/2021-films

Four titles particularly intrigued me

( details in the cut )

Connect for updates

https://longmoreinstitute.sfsu.edu/join-email-list or SFSUDisability or LongmoreInst

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21 virtual postcards from disabled artists

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 21:50:26 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

Curated by Harbourfront Center, a not-for-profit art center on Lake Ontario in Toronto.

https://harbourfront.live/festival/postcards/

Each first-person postcard combines video, still images, spoken word, captions. The artists address what life's like for them in the COVID-19 moment. Each artist’s page offers video links with and without audio description.

Gaelynn Lea improvises a dragon song on her fiddle (audio described)

https://harbourfront.live/event/gaelynn-lea/?enhance=yes

Dawn Jani Birley, a Deaf actor, describes flying from Canada to Finland while the world was locking down.

https://harbourfront.live/event/dawn-jani-birley/?enhance=yes

Brian Solomon, a non-symmetrical Indigenous dancer documents the family- and land-based art which is sustaining him during lockdown on his home land of Shebahonaning, Ontario "colonially known as Killarney."

https://harbourfront.live/event/brian-solomon

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Expert User Opinions on "Automatic Captioning"

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 21:43:08 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

MerylKEvans 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:

https://youtu.be/ukJfzPdiHB8

( YouTube embed and transcript )

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Online Disability Justice Panel 23 Apr 2020 2300 UTC

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 18:54:08 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

In addition to being relevant to many here, this is what online access can look like: American Sign Language, Spanish interpretation, and English live captions will be provided. Multiple breaks will be built in to the webinar.

"Grounding Movements in Disability Justice" will take place this Thursday -- 23 April 2020 -- between 7-8:30 PM EST (in your time zone) via the ZOOM platform.

Presenters include Azza Altiraifi, Cyree Jarelle Johnson, Dorian Taylor, Dustin Gibson, Talila A. Lewis, and Nirmala Erevelles. They will offer the perspective of people grounded in #DisabilityJustice work as they all respond to COVID-19.

To receive the ZOOM meeting invite, you must register here: https://bit.ly/djgrounding

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/214085396704598

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Great book on captioning/subtitling, including remixing CCs

Sun, 22 Apr 2018 21:55:06 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

Dr. Sean Zdenek is an associate professor of technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University. I'm here to rave about his Reading Sounds: Closed-Captioned Media and Popular Culture (print, ebook). It was full of immediately useful information and showed how captioning contributes to an aesthetic experience. He's a fan of genre TV, and he brings fannish enthusiasm to the task.

( Integrating Captions into the Artistic Process )

He hosts a supplementary site with videos of all the material discussed in his book. Just reading that site provides much of his message. It's also an excellent example of audio description.

http://readingsounds.net/book-contents/

( BB-8 chirps and it's good )

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Create Captions in Your Browser with Free, Offline Caption Tool

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 23:00:38 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

http://ncamftp.wgbh.org/cadet/

CADET is free, downloadable caption-authoring software that enables anyone to produce high-quality caption files that are compatible with any media player that supports the display of captions. CADET can also be used to generate audio-description scripts. CADET does not require an internet connection in order to operate: it runs locally in any Web browser, so users do not need to upload private videos or proprietary content to servers or video-hosting sites in order to create captions.

( feature overview and origins )

Variously called “The Caption Center,” the “Media Access Group,” and currently “The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media.” ↩︎

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Further thoughts on image descriptions and fandom

Wed, 25 May 2011 03:21:21 GMT

Posted by: sqbr

First: it's struck me that it would be really useful to have a consistent AO3 tag to add to art and comics with transcripts/descriptions, to make it easier for people looking for such works. Do people have any suggestions? "Transcript" is already used for certain kinds of prose, "transcribed art" maybe? "Described art"? "Art with description"?

Second: I was quite happy to see this in the preliminary FAQ for the Kaleidoscope fanworks challenge at dark_agenda:

Captions: Visual and audio content, especially those hosted on the Internet, often presents an accessibility issue for a significant number of us, not just those of us with visual and/or hearing impairments. For example, videos with English-language audio, for example, can pose a problem for some non-native English speakers and closed caption provides a helpful tool for them in processing what is being said.

Thus, we ask participants to consider providing some type of captioning for their fanwork if possible.

And then they go on to give some examples and resources.

Have many other challenges etc involving art and vids explicitly encouraged captions? It's the first time I've noticed it, but would be very happy if it's an emerging trend.

I've also been having fun thinking of disabled characters who would be plausibly eligible for the challenge.

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Subtitling Vids: Looking for volunteers!

Fri, 13 May 2011 01:00:16 GMT

Posted by: were_duck

Hello!

I'm one of the organizers for the Vid Party at WisCon, and this year we plan to curate a fully subtitled "Singalong" show, to increase the accessibility and enjoyment of our party. We are looking for volunteers to help with the process of subtitling. skud has posted a subtitling tutorial over in wiscon_vidparty if you'd like to take a look at what is involved. Incidentally, this method can be used to subtitle any video, not just fanvids, so please consider it a resource for your own use.

If you are interested in helping us subtitle--even just a video or two!--we would be most appreciative. Please just leave a comment in this post or drop an email to wiscon.vidparty [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Some questions about image descriptions

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:07:53 GMT

Posted by: sqbr

First: Is there anyone here who uses tumblr and benefits significantly from image/video descriptions? I've been making a small effort to champion them, but apart from the sorts of things that apply intermittently to everyone (A video blocked at your work or country, comics with tiny text etc) my arguments have all been about hypothetical users and it would be useful to (a)Have some evidence against the "but noone who needs descriptions would use a visual medium like tumblr" argument(*) and (b)Get any specific suggestions you guys might have to offer (like: given the fact that long descriptions are often cut off automatically or by rebloggers, is it better to do short ones? Or do you lose too much information?)

Second: With my fanart I've been pitching my descriptions at people who are familiar with canon unless I have some particular reason to think it will be interesting to those who aren't. In general I find writing descriptions quite mentally taxing and, beyond mentioning the names of the characters and canon so that people can google if they like, trying to imagine how to make the image make sense to someone who doesn't know canon without going into a three page backstory is usually too much for me. But since I don't really use image descriptions myself I worry I may be missing something.
( Read more... )

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Access Planning in Progress: Text Transcription Issues

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:45:36 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

jenett is narrating the process of access planning for an upcoming con over in the accessibility_fail community.

One element she's working on is real-time captioning, abbreviated as CART or RTC. SF/F cons provide a peculiarly challenging environment for real-time captioning: we tend to all talk at once; we talk over each other; we use plenty of made-up words, names, and acronyms; and our discussions swoop unpredictably between grade-school humor and post-doc details (sometimes in one sentence).

CART is created by a highly trained steno-captionist (court reporter) who uses a chording keyboard to transcribe what speakers say, sound for sound. Computer software translates this into text, which is projected on a screen behind the speaker. This phonic-based system means that CART transcribers do best when they can program in names, neologisms, and acronyms in advance. Without that advance prep, ER SUE LA LUG WIN and I SACK AS HIM OFF might be showing up in a panel discussion. On the plus side, the CART transcript is verbatim, which creates a good record of the event.

There's another approach to text-based transcription: "meaning for meaning" or "m4m" systems. At present there are two in the U.S.: TypeWell and C-PRINT. Both provide online training which prepares a transcriber in 60 hours or less. The transcriber uses a standard laptop with extensive abbreviation-expansion software, and basically liveblogs the event. The same concerns arise with personal names; the finished transcript is briefer and hopefully meatier. RTC stenocaptionists earn a minimum of $120/hour; TypeWell transcribers start at around $50/hour.

You can read a spirited discussion of the pros and cons of CART and TypeWell in the college classroom at Deafness section at About.com. Jamie Berke has been editing this section for decades, and she totally knows her stuff.

Finally, here's a good elevator overview of the assistive technologies most helpful for people who have hearing impairments.

Sign language interpreters is a whole 'nother post.

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