--- title: (ASR) Does closed captioning still serve deaf people? Gary Robson at TEDxBozeman subtitle: date: วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 22 มิถุนายน 2566 เวลา 13.16 น. --- (ข้อความสดจากระบบถอดความเสียงพูดทางไกล) hello Bozeman okay what do you think of when you hear the word accessibility wheelchair ramps handicap stalls in a public restroom Braylon an ATM perhaps I think of something less obvious but with a dramatic impact on the lives of 360 million people around the world imagine a deaf person about 50 years ago what a television set turned on and saw this that experience would have been a little bit different for a hearing person that's right there is a bulletin from CBS News positive Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas when President Kennedy was assassinated television was all but inaccessible 15 years later the Advent of closed captioning promised to open the world of television did that for audiences 30 years now after that first captured broadcast we're asking ourselves does closed captioning still serve the deaf and hard-of-hearing audience for him it was created captions are text on a video picture that allow people who can hear what's going on read it instead closed captions are hidden until you press the CC button on your remote control so the people who don't need the captions don't have to see them the first phase in caption development is development can take a long time television broadcasts in the United States began in 1928 it was over 40 years before we had closed captioning for deaf people 60 years before we had descriptive video service blind people but a lot of work had to be done caption decoders in in coders had to be invented software tools developed and training programs put together for captions after this first phase of development was complete we had captions for a small audience a few shows the second phase of accessibility broadening the base depended largely upon the law Americans with Disabilities Act a landmark act in almost all respect barely mentioned closed captioning later laws required television sets contain decoding circuitry and eventually mandated the presents although not the quality closed captioning on TV thanks to laws like that today television captioning is ubiquitous however as law and Technology APUSH captioning forward the availability of captions has often been offset by a decline in quality and a lack of focus what's important to the deaf community just last week or last month the f c c unanimously approved new standards for captioning please let us directly on the path to the third phase of accessibility quality that talks have to be prepared well in advance my talk was ready when this announcement was made causing me to rip out quite the lecture on why the f c c should be mandating quality but that's okay I don't mind the last minute changes it's for a good cause I just wish they'd waited until after my talk so at least I could take credit for it can be a sticky issue the dictionary called it a level of excellence in captioning a more useful definition would be understandability do the captions help someone who can't hear what's going on to see what's going on a different of mine once said we're not asking for special treatment all we want what the rest of you take for granted legislating quality is even more difficult industry experts have been arguing for decades over how to put a numeric score turn closed caption quality arguing is what we do but the one thing we agree on is that it begins with accuracy mcra the organization that certifies real-time captioners the ones who do captioning a 250 words a minute on Live Events measures caption quality by errors and omissions the fewer errors you make the higher your quality this those supposes that all words have equal importance do they take this well-known sentence from a Doctor Seuss classic if we were to drop the second word it wouldn't change the meaning of the sentence at all if we dropped the third word the sentence means the exact opposite I do like Green Eggs and Ham clearly all words don't have equal importance in real-time captioning errors are inevitable and often funny the keyboard that real-time close cashier's use is corded meaning you press more than one key at a time like a piano and a simple Miss fingering doesn't lead to a letter being wrong what is syllable a word or a phrase this is what led the closed captioning on a network news broadcast to introduce a lawyer as a liar a fun guy as fungi and the golfers nice putt has a nice butt post-production captioners have plenty of time in a studio to carefully craft text timing placement but the only way to assure high quality real-time closed captioning is to hire and train the best people for the job the fcc's definition of accuracy begins with matching the captions to the spoken dialogue but it continues to include background noises this is an example of focusing on the needs of the deaf audience imagine the captions going away on a television show I was a deaf you are to know where there's a technical glitch there's just nobody speaking at the moment a simple bracketed caption like claws laughter silence can answer that question high-quality captions must also be well synchronized a significant delay between the video and the captions can make a program hard to understand and I've recently measured delays over 12 seconds on broadcast television if you don't think that makes it hard for a deaf person to follow a program try watching a TV show or movie with the sound like in 12 seconds behind the picture Beast delays can also lead to a loss of caption data the captions are running 12 seconds behind every time you go to a commercial you're going to lose entire sentences and the fourth critical component to caption quality is placement nobody wants the captions covering the score on the ball game for the weatherman's map so what can we do to help first we can care we wouldn't tolerate grainy pictures floppy camera work poor audio quality bad lighting why should we tolerate bad caption the World Health Organization estimates 360 million people around the world have disabling hearing loss 360 million people that's equivalent to the entire population of the United States those people matter the next thing we can do is talk about it broadcasters don't get a lot of feedback from their death audience's a lot of deaf people don't want to be seen as complainers or they feel they should be grateful for whatever they're getting their captions are every bit as important as our sound Dunwoody captioning serve everybody captions can help children learn to read captions Aid in fighting against adult illiteracy captions help us follow a TV program in a noisy airport bar or gym but captions are a lot more than that the deck people captions can save lives in an emergency broadcast telling deaf people when they need to evacuate their homes for what roads to avoid and the same technology that used for television closed captioning is used in educational and business settings give Jeff people equal access capturing has been around now for over 30 years it's time to retune refocus and remember who closed caption was created for in the first place