Bridging the Gap Between the Hearing & Deaf Worlds
It’s very common to see people say “just read the subtitles/captions” when there are calls for sign language interpreters.
But is it really that simple? Spoiler alert: no. But it’s not complicated to understand it either.
Click here to learn when are subtitles/captions are not enough
It’s not often that I watch an advert for a movie and TV series that grabs my attention and makes me want to watch it…especially when that main reason is how they have done their captioning in their advert.
But that’s what the French-based Netflix series, Lupin, did. And I was hooked. Whilst watching it, I was also particularly impressed with a specific way they have done their translated subtitles in English in a specific scene.
Learn why I was impressed with ‘Lupin’ and their subtitles here
There seems to be a worrying and dangerous trend where large brands are censoring potential profanity and swear words in auto-captions. They claim that it is to avoid mistakes, but still, this is not a good idea.
This is following the recent news that YouTube has decided to censor potential profanity in their auto-captions just in case they pop up as mistakes. But this goes against the whole concept of having captions/subtitles in the first.
When on a video call, and if available, I tend to take advantage of the automatic subtitles to help get through the call, and most deaf people would do the same.
But automatic subtitles are not perfect. They’re not terrible, but they’re not perfect. However, there are steps everyone can take to make it as accurate as possible and make it easier for the technology to pick up the words.
There seems to be an ongoing trend from video creators and consumers in that closed captions on YouTube are not accurate, so it’s not worth worrying about.
What?!? Why do you think it’s not accurate? The responsibility of accurate video captions relies on you as the creator, not the technology that is creation auto-captions (aka CRAPtions).
Not only should all video creators take closed captions seriously, but if you are relying on some kind of artificial intelligence and machine learning to do the work for you, it will never be accurate. So take ownership of your content and make it accurate.
Learn why technology are not responsible for caption accuracy
After several years hiatus, I have gone back to the cinema to watch the new Star Wars movie, which also happens to be the first time ever I watched a movie with captions.
This post is not a review of the movie nor will there be any spoilers. It’s just a personal story of how it went for me and what could be done to make the cinema experience even more accessible for more people.
Click here to learn more about my first captioned cinema experience here
You are probably aware of the words ‘captions’ and ‘subtitles’ and at first glance, they may appear to be identical.
But they’re not.
So what are the differences between the captions and subtitles? And did you even know that there are differences?
You might find it hard to believe that auto-captions are bad for SEO. But if you think about it’s low-quality content; something which YouTube and Google does not like. Yet, from my own experience and research, many people still resort to using auto-captions (which is often labelled as ‘craption’) for their YouTube videos. We take […]
Welcome to The Hear Me Out! [CC] Podcast, an audio show (with transcripts included) where we listen to stories from fascinating individuals in and around the d/Deaf community and from your host, yours truly, Ahmed Khalifa.
In this episode, I got chatting with Henry Warren who is running a campaign called ‘Turn on the Subtitles’ where he is encouraging broadcasters and technology platforms to turn on the subtitles as research has shown that it can help improve children’s literacy rate.
Listen to podcast or read transcript of interview with Henry Warren
