Captioning for Live Events
Live captions are real-time, time-synchronized text that enhance virtual events, meetings, online classes, and performances. Captions are essential for individuals who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing, as approximately 15% of American adults—equivalent to 37.5 million people aged 18 and over — are currently living with some degree of hearing loss. Live captions address this accessibility gap, ensuring a more inclusive and engaging experience for ALL participants.
What Is CART Captioning?
CART, or Communication Access Real-time Translation, is a service where trained human captioners translate spoken word into captions that appear in real-time for the audience. The text generated by CART can be projected onto large screens, displayed on monitors or laptops, mobile devices, or even be streamed to an internet browser for remote accessibility. Inclusive Communication Services (ICS) offers CART captioning services for performances, conferences, conventions, business meetings, webinars, educational classes, and government panels.
Benefits of Live Captioning
The advantages of live captioning extend to a diverse range of audience members, addressing various accessibility needs and providing long-term benefits to your organization.
- Equal Access for Late Deafened or Hard of Hearing Individuals
Live captioning proves especially beneficial for individuals who are late deafened or hard of hearing, providing them with equal access and ease of comprehending information. - Enhanced Comprehension in Technical and Medical Fields
In highly technical or medical fields, signing Deaf individuals may prefer real-time captioning as a complement to sign language interpreting or as a standalone solution in specific scenarios, ensuring better understanding of complex subject matter. - Improved Accessibility for Learning and Cognitive Disabilities
Live captions cater to individuals in the audience with learning and cognitive disabilities, improving their ability to comprehend and focus in highly-stimulating environments. - Enhanced Comprehension in Understanding Strong Accents
Live captioning assists in situations where a speaker’s strong accent or mumbling might pose comprehension challenges, providing additional clarity for all attendees. - Language Inclusivity for Non English Speakers
Live captioning serves individuals for whom English is a second language, ensuring better understanding and inclusivity in diverse linguistic contexts. In addition, English live captions can seamlessly undergo translation into foreign languages during live events and post-production, effectively broadening the global reach of your event or content. - Increased Engagement through Visual Context
Real-time captions contribute to increased engagement by providing additional context and visual interest, making it easier for viewers to follow along with content and reducing distractions. - Improved Content Retention for All Viewers
Real-time captioning improves content retention for ALL audience members, with over 100 empirical studies confirming its positive impact on comprehension, attention, and memory of content. - Legal Compliance: Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
In some cases, live captioning services may be legally required, such as under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ensuring accessibility for all individuals. - Extended Accessibility for Social Media and Website Video Content
Live captions provide long-term benefits for organizations through content reusability. By saving and applying captions, the live event becomes permanently accessible, establishing your organization as a leader in creating inclusive content for diverse audiences. Facilitating this process, our Accessible Media Services team can provide valuable assistance to creating universally accessible and engaging video content. - Enhanced Business Impact: SEO and User Experience
Building on the long-term advantages, the integration of captions provides notable business benefits. This includes the potential to boost search engine optimization (SEO) and enrich the overall user experience, making content more accessible and discoverable. By embracing captions, your organization not only meets accessibility standards but also strategically improves its online presence and brand image.
Types of Live Captioning
Not all live captions are equal, and the focus should not only be on providing live captions but also on ensuring a high level of accuracy in the captioning process. There are two primary methods for incorporating live captions: live automatic captioning and live human captioning.
Live Automatic Captioning
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), while more cost-effective, is plagued by low accuracy rates. Utilized on platforms like Zoom and YouTube, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), these captions frequently contain errors in speaker identifications and grammar. Automatic captions are notorious for errors in punctuation, resulting in changing the meaning of entire sentences.
The lack of contextualization abilities in AI can result in misunderstandings. Consider: What if an important word is wrong? What if the overall accuracy tanks? Is lag or connectivity a factor?
The errors of live automatic captions can significantly impact viewer understanding. Real-time interactivity is something that a human captioner has a real advantage over auto-captioning.
Live Human Captioning
To fully harness the benefits of live captions, accuracy is paramount. Human involvement in real-time captioning workflow significantly improves producing accurate and comprehensible captions. Captioners need to perceive, interpret, and transcribe spoken words to produce the correct output. Humans possess the unique capability to quickly grasp what someone is saying, even in a subject matter they are not well-versed in. This adaptability stems from our ability to understand the narrative or story the speaker is conveying. Computers lack the comprehension to anticipate or predict what someone is about to say next in the same way humans do. To guarantee true inclusivity for your event, Inclusive Communication Services (ICS) recommends the utilization of CART captioning services.
How to Request CART Captioning Services With ICS
Requesting CART Captioning Services with ICS is easy! To initiate the booking, simply contact us or request a quote. We offer a 6-step PDF format designed specifically for booking CART services, making the process user-friendly and efficient. This form serves as a particularly useful resource for individuals referring vendors for live event accommodation support. Ensure your next event is accessible with the inclusive experience provided by ICS.
