jesse_the_k: Drowning man reaches out for help labeled "someone tweeted" (someone tweeted)
Jesse the K ([personal profile] jesse_the_k) wrote in [community profile] accessibility_fail2010-02-26 02:19 pm
Entry tags:

The Reality of YouTube Autocaptions

(x-posted from my personal journal)

You may have seen Google/YouTube announce the magic of auto-captioning last November.

Gee whiz, they even had a deaf programmer write the blog entry. Things are good, right?

Watch this Bill Moyers interview with David Simon on YouTube. It's got captions. They're automagically generated with voice recognition. Compare the audio tracks and the caption track and be stunned at the high level of errors. Notice that White speakers' words are around 80% correct and Black speakers' words more like 30% correct.

Yes, it takes time to make good on technology's promise. In the meantime, disabled people put up with sub-standard services—and often at premium prices. When they're perfected, they'll be generally available.

These bad captions are particularly frustrating because the original sources were already captioned! Since the 1980s all network PBS (US public television) has been captioned; the same has been true for all HBO (paid US cable network) productions since 1995.

Arghhh.
exor674: Computer Science is my girlfriend (Default)

[personal profile] exor674 2010-02-26 09:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Not that I'm defending PBS, but I wonder if it's a licensing thing or something. $company_who_captioned is all "waah, we don't you to put our captions on YouTube"
codeman38: Osaka from Azumanga Daioh, with a speech bubble reading 'Contemplation No. 1'. (contemplation)

[personal profile] codeman38 2010-02-26 09:03 pm (UTC)(link)
I've actually considered that; a lot more of their programming seems to be outsourced to external captioning companies lately. But a good deal of PBS' programming is still captioned in-house at WGBH, for which that excuse hardly seems to hold water.

[personal profile] treeowl 2010-03-09 01:16 am (UTC)(link)
Has anyone contacted PBS about this?