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stenographer or palantypist

Stenographer, palantypist, and transcriptionist – what’s the difference?

When you think of a stenographer, you probably picture someone sitting in a courtroom, frantically typing out everything that’s being said, but this is just a simplified version we see on TV.

In reality, it’s more complicated than that, and once people start using words like typist, palantypist, and transcriptionist, then things really start to get confusing. Read more

live captioning

Live captioning: It shouldn’t happen to a captioner – but it does

Live captioning mishaps!

When your machine spits out a word that makes you blush

It’s not easy being a captioner. Live captioning at up to 300 words per minute is challenging enough without your stenography machine having a life of its own. The results can be shocking for everyone involved.

Regina live captioning

Regina DeMoville

Here’s one of our captioners, Regina DeMoville:

I’d just started doing live captioning for broadcast, and was working on a news programme. It was an ad break and I’d turned the realtime captioning off on my stenography machine so I could fix any mistakes and add vocabulary into my steno dictionary. I noticed that I’d tried to write ‘harass’ and it had come out wrong. So I wrote it again, correctly this time, and added it into my dictionary. Unfortunately our software had a mind of its own.

After the commercial I resumed live captioning. To my horror the software spat out “her ass” as I started writing! I was mortified and thought for sure I’d be fired! Thankfully, the TV station did not catch my mistake and I still have a job!

broadcast live captioning

Regina’s TV broadcast captioning set up

 

That reminds us of the time when a captioner provided live captioning for a university. She was live captioning onto a large screen, to a room full of students. Just one little mis-key on the steno machine and the phrase ‘you’re used to f…..king’ came up instead of what had been said. Cue a room full of laughter and one horrified captioner deeply relieved she was providing realtime captioning remotely!

live captioning

Regina captions a convention in Las Vegas

When you need to swear but the computer says no…

Here’s Regina again…

I was live captioning a deaf-blind convention in Las Vegas and they had a comedian on stage during the keynote speech. The only prep they gave me was the comedian’s name so I had no idea what was coming. A few minutes in he started telling a joke that contained the F word. As a broadcast captioner I can’t let swear words go out over the air, and had removed those words from the dictionary on my steno machine to make sure.

Once the comedian got into his stride it seemed like every second word was the F word. And because it wasn’t in the dictionary and I was live captioning, I had to write each individual letter out every time he said it. By the time he was halfway through the set it was getting harder and harder to keep up, and completely added to the stress of trying to remember the last joke and the punchline perfectly!

And then there was the Jay Z concert I was live captioning. Knowing how much he swears I’d updated the dictionary in the steno machine in readiness, but the damned steno software censored every swear word he said. The tech guys sorted it out for the second half, but until then the client must have wondered at Jay Z’s newly-reformed character!

Has anything unexpected happened during your live captioning events? Let us know!

Getting the best out of remote captioning for teleconferences

remote captioning checklist

Whether you’re an organisation with deaf employees, or a deaf professional yourself, there are some key things you need to know to ensure live remote captioning of your teleconferences goes smoothly. Here are our top 10 tips:

  1. Book remote captioning as far in advance as you can. That helps us to provide a captioner who will suit your needs. If, for example, you are working on a project involving a series of teleconferences, we’ll do our best to provide you with the same captioner throughout.
  2. Don’t forget to provide us with the teleconference access details as soon as you get them. Our captioners join your calls at least ten minutes before they start to ensure your remote captioning is ready from the get-go.
  3. If you have an agenda and list of attendees we’d love to see them in advance. It makes a big difference to your experience of remote captioning if we can add those details to our software before the call.
  4. The same goes for any technical terms and names of people, places, events etc that you might discuss in the meeting. Don’t worry, we don’t need chapter and verse on them, just to add them into our remote captioning software ahead of the meeting so we use – and spell –them accurately. All this preparation helps us ensure our remote captioning, and real-time transcription, are as accurate as possible.
  5. It’s a good idea for speakers to identify themselves at the start of the teleconference and, if possible, when they speak. This helps the deaf participants to know who is speaking.
  6. If there is a Chairperson for the meeting, please ask participants to take turns to speak. We recognise that can be a challenge during teleconferences, but every little helps!
  7. Everyone on the call will benefit if participants are reminded to speak clearly, and ensure they are in range of a microphone.
  8. If appropriate for the teleconference it will help live captioning if all non-speaking participants have their phones on mute. It can be hard for everyone to hear over the sound of train announcements or street hubbub.
  9. Do let us know in advance if there is any video or PowerPoint presentation planned. With 1Fuzion – state-of-the-art technology – our remote captioning can stream on top of your presentation or YouTube video, meaning deaf participants only need one screen to watch the film/presentation and read the captions.
  10. Talk to us! If you have any queries or want expert advice on your teleconference, just email us on bookings@121captions.com or call us on +44 (0) 20 8012 8170. If a query arises during a live remote captioning session, deaf participants can message the captioner direct via the chat box on the captions screen.

To find out more about our remote captioning services for teleconferences, meetings, events and training, contact us.

CERA Awards

Customer Experience Recognition Awards

CERA Awards Info Dev World 2014

The 2014 CERA Winners | Photo courtesy of Content Rules Inc.

Do you offer great customer service?

As more and more organizations of all sizes and across all industries recognize the importance of content in supporting business relationships with customers, content producers face tremendous challenges and opportunities, that they are meeting in all sorts of innovative ways. The Customer Experience Recognition Awards (CERAs) recognize outstanding contributions to the customer experience made by content developers.

Developed in conjunction with Information Development World, the CERAs recognition ceremony takes place at a special luncheon on October 1, during the iDW conference. First, we need to collect the best content-driven customer experience initiatives. Then we’ll have some of the leading experts in customer experience, technical communications, content marketing, accessibility, localization, product management, and content strategy review the projects to determine which ones are worthy of receiving a CERA.

We invite you to nominate and submit an entry online between 9 am (ET) May 11, 2015 and 5 pm August 29, 2015 in one of the following categories: Accessibility, Customer Support – Technical Communications, Employee Engagement, Information Discovery, Translation/Localization and User Community / Social Media.

As we embark on the 2015 CERAs, we will share additional information on judges, advice on submissions, and details of the recognition ceremony. Sign-up for updates here. We hope you’ll join us.

realtime captions at awards ceremony

Al Martine presents the awards ceremony with realtime captions on a large screen

Realtime captions at CERA

At last year’s event, 121 Captions demonstrated the benchmark for good accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing customers. 121 Captions was a sponsor of the Information Development World 2014 conference in Silicon Valley and we had a booth to showcase our captioning services. Tina was a judge at the Customer Experience Recognition Awards so she attended, and we provided realtime captions (CART) for the event. CART is Communication Access Realtime Translation, captions produced in realtime by a stenographer. This event was in Silicon Valley, and we had booked one of our CART writers in Kansas. She simply phoned into a laptop at the venue, which had been set up next to the presenter’s microphone, and listened to the speeches. As she wrote, the captions streamed over the internet and showed up on the large screen in less than 1 second.

Val Swisher tweets about realtime captions

There were tablets and iPads set up on the tables, and the realtime captions were streamed to these at the same time as on the big screen. We are so proud to have the fastest multi channel realtime captions streaming platform available today. Access which is almost instant means real inclusion for deaf people, which equates to great customer service!

realtime captions on iPad

iPad screenshot of realtime captions

Providing the best quality realtime captions meant we could really drive home the point that good customer service is easy to do – in this case, making an event accessible to hard of hearing and deaf delegates. There were some deaf delegates in the audience who had not, prior to the event, disclosed their hearing loss, and they were delighted to have full access. They had never seen realtime captions before. The feedback from the delegates on Twitter showed that even those who could hear, were able to appreciate having realtime captions. Captioning is not only for those with a hearing loss, it is useful for hearing people too.

twitter marcia

Find out more about our captioning service

Contact us at bookings@121captions.com or give us a call on +44 (0) 20 8012 8170

South Africa live captioning

Live captioning in South Africa

If you’re a student, do you find it hard to hear in lectures? Would you benefit from having live captioning of your lecture streamed to your smartphone or tablet in one second, and having a transcript immediately afterwards?

We are the first captions provider to provide live captioning services in South Africa. This is a fantastic achievement as there are so many barriers to deaf access in education, such as the lack of sign language interpreters. Real-time captioning of lectures is being very enthusiastically welcomed, it is seen as a real game-changer for deaf students.South Africa live captioning

Jody talks about live captioning

Jody, one of our clients, wrote about her experience of live captioning in the classroom;

I have two cochlear implants and I am studying an Honours in Genetics this year.

121 Captions is a service provided that produces a live transcription of a class or conference whereby the person who needs the live transcription can read what it happening on his/her cell phone/tablet/laptop.

Currently, 121 Captions have been assisting me with my lectures every day since the beginning of April. As I listen to my lecturer, I read the live transcription from my cell phone, although a tablet is more ideal.

Without 121 assisting me, I wouldn’t have been able to fully understand my lectures as I tend to miss out when I listen. I also can’t remember things when I hear it, which makes it even more difficult. I am therefore able to remember everything I read, thus 121 also provides the transcription of the lecture at the end of the day for me to read in my own time and to study from.

It is one of the best services I have encountered, not only for people with a hearing disability but for anyone who needs a transcription of a class, lecture, conference or even a board meeting. Thank you 121 Captions for assisting me!

How does live captioning work in the classroom?

Check out the video to see how live captioning is set up in the classroom and used by students. If you would like to enquire about our live captions service, contact us or email us at bookings@121captions.com

1capapp live captioning

Our live captioning platform

live captioning

Our live captioning streaming software is the most stable, secure, and fastest in the world, streaming live captions to you in less than 3 seconds. Our captioning platform is the ideal solution for professionals who wish to have their teleconference calls or events captioned. It is now even better!

Our live captioning platform delivers time-saving solutions for CART providers, captioners and court reporters who provide live captioning streaming for business meetings, classroom lectures, depositions, stadium captioning, as well as Adobe and WebEx collaboration. Broadcast Engineers are excited about the ability to provide captions for live video webcasting while at the same time, sending closed captions to TV.

In the last few months alone we have added the following enhancements to to an already robust platform:

For the Viewer:

  • Streaming text formatting:  Coloured Highlighting, Bold, Underline Font colours etc and saved with the transcript.
  • Streaming text speed control:  The viewer can control how fast the captions arrive to the screen making it easier to follow what is being said.  The words flow smoothly across the page at the slower pace.
  • The Stream Box, Notes Box & Chat box are all resizable.  Plus the stream box can be opened in a new window.
  • Optimized view screen for mobile devices.

For the Captioner

  • Test Stream:  Writer can test the communication link free without accumulation of session time.
  • Easily managed recurring sessions
  • Macro for: Subscript ; Superscript; Bold; Underline
  • Macro for:  New Line –  Solves problems with Feeding Scripts using F12 key
  • Macro for: New Speaker Colour –  Automatically changes the text color of a new speaker.

To find out more about our live captioning platform

Contact us at bookings@121captions.com

laptop view

What is CART?

CART stands for Communication Access Realtime Translation, an American term. In the UK, the equivalent is known as Speech-to-Text (STT). This is the true verbatim live transcription of speech – not voice recognition or respeaking, which are not verbatim.
If you’d like to find out more about CART or speech to text, contact us at bookings@121captions.com and ask for a demonstration and we can discuss your captioning needs.

 

Author: Rob Roth, AccessComputing staff

AccessComputing announces a new 7minute-34 second video, Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) Services for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing People, that explores what CART is and where it can be used. The video is ideal for anyone who is deaf or hard of hearing and is considering what types of accommodations would be best for participating in a college-level class or at a conference.The video was developed after it was discovered that few, if any, resources were available on the Internet to explain what CART and other captioning systems were. Four students from the Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Computing, including two ASL signers, speak about why they chose captioning within a STEM educational setting.

Copyright © 2014 by University of Washington. Permission is granted to copy these materials for educational, noncommercial purposes provided the source is acknowledged. The AccessComputing project is funded by the National Science Foundation (grant #CNS-0540615, CNS-0837508, and CNS-1042260). Any questions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the federal government. We support the University of Washington’s online privacy statement and its terms and conditions of use.