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Human captioning is real-time text of the spoken word.

Human captioning is used by a wide range of audiences for accessibility purposes. Deaf and people with hearing loss will rely on live captioning to understand speakers at events or on broadcast media. There are many other groups who also benefit from live captioning, neurodiverse people with Autism, Asperger’s, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyslexia and auditory processing disorders will also rely on and benefit from live captioning. Older people with hearing loss will also use live captioning to support their engagement and understanding of verbal content and people with English as a second language find live captioning invaluable when attending events or watching broadcast media.

There are a number of methods to delivering live captioning. Human captioners listen to what’s being said and type on a special keyboard using a special phonetic code, which translates against their own personal dictionary into live captioning. Captioners are highly skilled and can caption at up to 250 per minute with 99% accuracy. Captioners included all punctuation and grammar to reflect meaning, intonation and tone of voice of the speakers. They also identify the speakers using labels. They can edit speakers with accents or who are not fluid in their speech, making the captions more “readable” for the audience. Captioners also add in other audio information such as mobile phones ringing or laughter, or anything else that might be happening that the audience needs to be aware of. Captioners can bring to life the words spoken by speakers. Human captioners are the most inclusive way of providing live captions for the audience. They can work with any material with enough preparation and complex situations such as multiple speakers, accents, speech impediments and dramatic and music content.

Respeaking is also a method of delivering live captions. Respeakers respeak what’s being said into voice recognition software that they have trained to their voice and add in punctuation, grammar and labels where possible. This method is still reliant on software for recognition but high accuracy levels can be achieved with this method

AI Captioning has improved a lot in the last few years. It works well with a single speaker presenting. Accuracy levels can be high with certain material. It does not always reflect complex grammar or punctuation or meaning of text. It simply translates what it thinks it hears without intervention.

When choosing the right option for your event think about budget, subject matter and audience to select the method that’s best for what you are trying to achieve. Do ask us if you want to know more or need guidance.

Open captions are always in vision and embedded into the stream of the event.

Closed captions are captions that can be turned on and off within the viewing platform. AccessLOOP supports 608/708 format for closed captions.

Captioners do not need specialist software to deliver closed captions, as with other systems.

Closed captions are available for Live Captioners and AI captions.

Multi-language closed captions are not yet available on any system but AccessLOOP is working towards a system in 2023.

AccessLOOP has preferred suppliers please contact us for a list of recommended suppliers.