WEBVTT

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Interpreter: If you create
video and audio content

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or host events,

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there are two reasons
to care about providing

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high quality, same language
captioning and transcription.

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The first is obvious,

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that there are millions
of people like myself,

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who get accessibility through captions.

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But another reason


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is that you will reach
a much larger audience

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and increase your return
on investment.

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80% of people who use
captions are not deaf.

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Captions help foreign language learners,

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people in gyms, or bars, 
or sound sensitive environments,

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and assist when the speaker
has a strong accent,

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or when content is complicated
and difficult to understand.

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Captions increase
the viewership by 40%.

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90% of videos with captions
are watched to completion.

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Digiday states that

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85% of Facebook videos
are viewed in mute mode,

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so captioning has become a necessity.

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Growing up,
I didn't have captioning access

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until I was in eighth grade.

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That's when my dad brought home a box

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called a captioning decoder.

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We were amazed by this magic box

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that made captions show up
on almost all the TV channels.

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Now captioning support
is included in all TV models

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and video players,

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and there's no need 
for external decoders anymore.

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Captions are now not limited
even to TV and videos,

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they can also be provided
in real-time

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for breaking news, webinars, events,

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classes, work meetings, and so on.

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Once I was given access
to captioned material,

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my life completely changed

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and new worlds opened up for me.

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But I'm not alone.

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There are over 48 million 
deaf and hard of hearing people

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in United States.

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And over 466 million worldwide.

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The number is increasing
rapidly as well,

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especially because the number
one cause of hearing loss now

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is constant exposure to loud noises.

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Captions also helped me master
English as my third language.

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Even my parents,
who have perfect hearing,

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love captions because English
is not their native language.

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Quality is critical

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when you're considering captions.

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While there are now
many speech technologies

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that can translate automatically

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spoken words into captions,

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they're often not accurate.

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Many deaf people call them
"craptions".

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(Laughter)

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Under ideal conditions,

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the accuracy rate is usually
somewhere between 80 and 90%.

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And it gets even worse
with complex content,

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or accents, background noise,

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when speakers are speaking too fast,

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or overlap each other.

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And bad captions 
are not better than nothing.

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Garbled captions are hard to read.

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And it's just like
listening to garbled audio.

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Caption errors make it hard to understand

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or retain any information.

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Poor captions affect your SEO,
search engine optimization,

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and decrease your CPM,
your clicks per mille,

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for videos and your ROI,
return on investment.

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Google is deaf like me

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and doesn't like videos
with auto-captioning,

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so it just does not index
those videos.

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So Google penalizes producers

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for turning on the auto-captions

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instead of actually adding
proper captioning themselves.

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Even if a machine could translate

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every spoken word
to captions accurately,

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it still cannot follow
certain quality guidelines.

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For example, you may see
text exactly as it's heard,

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for example this:

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Lets eat grandma.

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(Laughter)

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Now, does that mean
that we should go ahead

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and consume grandma,

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or that we should dine with her?

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It's not clear, right?

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Now that's much better.

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(Laughter)

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So proper grammar 
and punctuation are critical

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for optimal experience
in reading captions.

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Just like speech intonations are.

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Quality guidelines are long and complex,

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so I'm just sharing a few
basic tips with you today.

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Transcripts and captions
need to be verbatim

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They need to follow
proper grammatical rules,

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include non-speech elements,

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use upper and lower case letters,

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have good font size and color contrast,

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and translate profanity --

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word for word,

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assuming it's not bleeped out 
in the audio.

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Captions and transcripts 
need to be completed

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before you publish 
or share videos and podcasts.

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So everyone can enjoy them
at the same time.

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And if you advertise in advance

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that events will have real-time captions,

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you will get a larger audience.

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With advances in technologies,

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it is much easier, faster,and cheaper

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to create captions now
more than ever before.

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For example, 
YouTube offers a great free tool

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to create and edit captions.

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You can save and download
your captions as an SRT caption file

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and import it onto Vimeo, Facebook,

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or other video platforms

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that offer captioning support.

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Here's a short example.

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So you can see how easy it is.

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Yes, it's really easy.

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And you can clean up 
the auto captions if you like,

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or you can create them from scratch.

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Just please do not turn on
auto captions

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and just leave them as is.

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And please add video captions

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on all platforms that you use,

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and couple those captions
with transcripts for videos,

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because those are useful 
for people who cannot see the video

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or that want to skim the information.

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If your organization can do so,

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consider hiring an experienced specialist

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who is familiar with quality
standards and guidelines.

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They can produce your captions
and transcripts faster

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and make them look 
more professional and easy to read.

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The costs for transcripts and captions

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vary from a dollar all the way 
to $10 or $15 per minute.

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And the rates really depend

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on experience and the skills 
of the vendor,

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the audio quality,

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the content complexity,
among other factors.

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Low cost may result in bad quality.

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Some vendors may use
auto-captioning themselves

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or unskilled labor

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that will result in low caption quality

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and end up wasting your money.

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Always review 
the selected vendor's prior work

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to assess the quality.

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If you have budget limitations,

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there are some creative ways
to find money

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like asking sponsors to cover expenses.

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I work with media producers,
corporations,

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educational institutions,
business owners, event organizers,

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and I help make their audio,
video, and events accessible

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at a reasonable cost.

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There's some guidance and information
along with my personal story

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that can be found in my book.

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If nobody asks for speech to text access,

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that does not mean that there's no demand.

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It needs to be provided
for all types of aural information

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even without a prior request.

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High quality, same language
captions and transcripts

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are good for business

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and a necessity for millions of people.

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Let's think outside the ears!

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(Laughter)

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Let's caption everything!

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Get your message to more people.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)