7 tips for conference captioning

We provided real-time captioning to the 9th International Abilympics conference in Bordeaux last week, with steno captioners (stenographers) in England, Ireland, and the USA streaming captions over the internet to large screens at the venue in France. This is the biggest disability event in France with 6,000 people attending and lasted four days. President François Hollande was attending, so we had to make sure everything ran as smoothly as possible. So many things can go wrong when captioning a conference. Here are our tips for getting it right.

Screenshot of real-time captions at 9th International Abilympics

Good preparation. Get hold of the schedule well in advance, with the exact start and finish times, breaks, and set up times that work for the audio-visual team. Be sure to get a copy of all the Powerpoint slides for the stenographers to scan, a link to the event url, and names of all the presenters. If there is an award ceremony, obtain a list of names of all the winners and runners up – your captioner wants to spell everyone’s name correctly.
Check the audio. Schedule a sound check with the stenographer a few days before the event starts. Make sure the microphones work and test them. Ensure the stenographer has back up and emergency phone number.
Check the internet set up. We always recommend hard wired cable internet, not wifi. If more than 200 people are following the captions via the remote link, sufficient capacity needs to be made on the server to accommodate this – so let the captioning admin team know.
Test the captions. In the venue, have the stenographer write a few sentences during the sound check, and make sure you have a font size, colour, type, and background colour you are happy with on your large screen.
Test 1Fuzion. If you are using 1Fuzion to stream captions on top of your Powerpoint slides or video, it’s a good idea to test this out before your event, so you are comfortable with the settings.
Good quality translators. If your translators are good, your captions will be good! Abilympics was delivered in French, with French captions. Translators were booked to translate what they heard into English; our stenographers listened to the translators and delivered English captions.
Communicate. The 121 Captions admin team, stenographers, conference event organisers, audio-visual technicians, and translators work together as a team to make real-time captioning work well – even feedback from the client during the event is fed back into the process. Together, we are better.