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YouTube debuts automatic captioning for deaf users

Posted Nov 20th, 2009 at 9:23 PM and seen
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Google announced this week that YouTube has started rolling out automatic captions across the video sharing site. The initial roll-out only includes 13 channels, including National Geographic and Columbia, but will eventually extend across the site. The technology has special meaning to the software engineer heading up the project because he is deaf. In a post on the Google blog, Ken Harrenstien wrote, “The majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me.”

The system still needs to work out some kinks (a demo of the feature captioned “sim card” as “salmon”), but Harrenstien is confident that the machine-generated captions “will continue to improve with time.”

All sorts of deaf-related news and views.

 Annie Colbert

Comments (3)

Nov 21, 2009
Tanya English said...
As a long-time advocate for people with hearing loss, I commend Google and YouTube for making strides in the area of online video accessibility. As the owner of a realtime transcription company (and a realtime captioner myself) I can tell you that the machine-generated automatic captions will not be good enough to provide meaningful accessibility for many years to come. At best, the results are approx. 60-65% accurate. Captioning standards require at least 98% accuracy. I've been watching this technology closely, since I am eager to use this automatic speech-to-text technology in certain aspects of my transcription business. The reality is, it's nowhere near ready.

We have developed a new media player that enables searching of video based on transcripts, and we do have captioning features on the player. I am very concerned about providing the BEST access possible for those folks with hearing loss. In my opinion, videos transcribed and captioned by trained humans are still necessary for full accessibility.

Is "something better than nothing" when it comes to captioning? Yes, when we're speaking of videos being produced and posted by individuals. But when we're speaking of content that is produced by businesses and universities and governmental entities, (some of whom must comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act that requires accessibility on their websites), the automatic machine-generated captions are not good enough.

If you'd like to check out our searchable online media player, please take a look at our featured video about a deaf man in South Florida.
http://www.realtimetranscription.com/featured/

The primary focus of our player is SEARCHABILITY of video, from within the player and from the internet. We are working to make the captioning features better, and we welcome your comments and feedback (on the player and on our transcription accuracy).

Thank you for writing about this topic.

Tanya English, Dir. of Technology
Realtime Transcription, Inc.

http://www.realtimetranscription.com

Nov 22, 2009
cgand said...
They should like this:
Mac OSX video tutorial i18n subtitles project
http://mactutorial.wikidot.com
Nov 22, 2009
JJ Diaz said...
Worderful news! This is incredibly useful and much expected by deaf hard of hearing users. The best think after mobile text messaging, email and video chat communication tools.

I got increasingly bothered to to click on the CC icon only to get the 'captions not available' message in any YouTube video.

Is there a Closed Caption video list available out there?

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