[Doug]: Welcome to Feeling Through Live episode 23, entitled Caption This. You might've heard that cheeky saying, but, as the comment beneath a lot of pictures online, but we're more referring to captioning and other elements of accessibility that we'll be talking about today, I have the distinct pleasure to be joined by Phil from Ai-Media, Phil. Hello, happy Friday.
[Phil]: Hi. Nice to, uh, nice to be here and appreciate the opportunity Doug.
[Doug]: Well. I'm, I'm really excited to have you here today and talk about, again, a lot of elements of accessibility, but you know, first and foremost captioning and what I'm really excited to talk to you about it is you're someone who I understand is been in the captioning game for, for about three decades now, seeing it go from I'm sure, quite a lot of changes over that time. But before we hop into all of that, I'd love to just know how, what got you into that field in the first place?
[Phil]: Um, well, I've never heard it put quite that way, three decades. You're, you're making me feel pretty old here.
[Doug]: You started when you were six years old, so.
[Phil]: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Uh, so yeah, you know, I just happened to kind of be in the right place at the right time. Uh, I was in, I was in college. Um, I was working in the media center, uh, at our university and uh, some folks wanted to create Christian media for people who were deaf and hard of hearing. And I was working with them to set that up. Now when, when that first started, this is back in the eighties and the late eighties, uh, it was an interpreter inset in the corner of the screen. That was the kind of the standard method of accessibility. Um, and, and we began at that time again, late eighties, um, putting captions at it was really more, a matter of subtitles.
[Phil]: That's kind of how it started was subtitles. Um, and then, uh, it quickly emerged into, what's known as line 21 closed captioning, uh, that that really kind of got it's its footing, uh, it's grounding in the late eighties. And, and, uh, you know, you started to see some programming on PBS, uh, public broadcasting that was captioned and so forth, uh, and, it began to, uh, kind of emerge that way and then continue to grow. So it was still kind of a specialty thing. It was incredibly expensive to do, uh, like, like a comparison of at that time it was probably $1,500 an hour or so, uh, to caption as opposed to now it's around a hundred dollars an hour, depending, you know, on, on different options and so forth. But, uh, it was extremely expensive, labor intensive and so forth, but that's kind of where it started and where I started.
[Doug]: Great. And then, you know, I guess, um, you know, there's, there's a lot to talk about here, you know, given, given how much things have changed since then. Um, but can you talk about, you know, what are, what are the primary changes that have occurred over that time that you've been in that space?
[Phil]: Sure. Well, you know, I, I think from an actual captioning standpoint, when, when you think of television and media, uh, it went from a few select programs being captioned to the Telecommunications Act, which, which basically requires all programming to have captioning on it. Uh, so, you know, I mean that really opened up, you know, a couple of shows to, you know, however many shows are on your cable network now, uh, that, that have captioning. So the actual market of television captions exploded. Um, but that really is only one area of captions that we have seen, you know, that, that kind of has been the, uh, if you will, the lead generator, but, but what we're seeing is, and I've shared with this, this with you, uh, when we kind of had a pre-conversation, but I, you know, captioning is really becoming, what I would say is a universal design concept. Uh, you know, you would, you would never build a building nowadays without an elevator, but elevators were not just to make it easier for everyone to get to multiple floors, elevators were designed for people using wheelchairs primarily. But now you would never think of building a building without an elevator, same with curb cutouts in downtown. You know, I think that, uh, people pushing strollers and bicycles and even skateboarders would say, they love the fact that there are curb cutouts, but those became, those are standard again, right? They're universal design. So that downtowns and city streets are accessible to wheelchair users, scooter users, and so forth. So, you know, those are all things that have become universal design. I think captioning is very much the same way. Uh, I, I'm a walker. I go out and I walk and I, I'm not, I'm not creeping on people's houses, but I'll walk by and I'll see television sets on and people's homes. And you'll see the captioning on, a lot of folks keep the captioning on all the time. Uh, it helps in understanding it helps with reading skills as well as obviously general accessibility for caption users. So you're seeing all the television material captioned and used, that's bleeding over into the workplace. Uh, people are saying, uh, I have captions and accessibility at home. I want the same thing in my work environment, uh, my play environment and so forth. So you're just seeing captioning grow tremendously throughout the marketplace.
[Doug]: So obviously you mean really painting this picture of, you know, it being something that was really quite rare, cost-prohibitive in a lot of ways. Um, and really not just really just not the same awareness around it when you started to now it being really ubiquitous with all types of content, and something that's really, um, used by a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. Can you talk a little bit more about from, from your perspective, what, what were the key factors in really transforming people's awareness and understanding of captions? Because I'm sure it didn't just happen like this where one day it's, you know, people hardly know about it and think it's useless and the next day everyone's using it. Can you talk about some of the key things that played a role in really transforming people's awareness around it, to it being this thing that's everywhere and used by all different kinds of people for all different reasons?
[Phil]: Right. Well, I think Doug, one of the major factors has been the ADA. Now I am not an ADA expert by any stretch. So I, you know, I don't want to come across that way. And, and if I say something wrong, I don't want people upset with me because I, I am a self-professed non-expert in that area. But, but I think that the, the overall, ADA, inclusion aspect and growth in the United States was a huge factor. I mean, telecommunications played a role in the ADA. I mean, there's a whole division on telecommunications and that's part of the reason why television, uh, became accessible. I mean, I wished the networks would have decided to do it on their own, but they really didn't. The government told them they had to. And so, you know, as I think as people with disabilities, uh, were able to experience new opportunities in the workplace, accessibility, mobile accessibility, and so forth, you know, the whole concept of inclusion, and accommodation became common terminology in the work environment. And I mean, captions are just one of those pieces, uh, when, when it comes to an accommodation,
[Doug]: You know, and yeah, we've certainly had the opportunity to talk a decent amount about the ADA in this format and this, uh, on this platform. I am also not an expert, but I've certainly learned a lot over the last several months, particularly since we've recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of the ADA. And I love, you know, you're in this really interesting and unique position in that you've kind of, you've known this space since really kind of right around the start of the ADA through now kind of really spans the, the life of the ADA. And it's, I think it's, though something that we talked about when we did some special episodes around ADA 30, the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, where, you know, certainly some of the discussion is like where we still have to go knowing that, you know, not everything has been accomplished. It is nice to know with captions as kind of a microcosm of an example, how much progress if you will has been made from say day one to day, however many days are in 30 years, is, is really encouraging to know. And I think that sometimes particularly people who are on the front lines of advocacy, from the disability community are often very much, probably in the space of seeing what, have to really dwell in the space of what hasn't happened yet or what needs to get better. But I think it's also a good moment to look back again, through the lens of captions and go like, wow, there's been some pretty significant jumps from, from day one to now. You know, again, I loved what you were starting to say about how the ADA, the ADA had played a large role in starting to shapepeople's, understandings and change awareness around all aspects of accessibility, captions included. You know, I love when we got to connect before you gave that analogy of that, I forgot what city it was and the conversation about curb cutouts with, I believe it was the mayor. I think that's such a great analogy to show, um, kind of that illuminates a lot. Can you, can you share that with everyone?
[Phil]: Sure. That the story, the story went, there was a, an advocacy group who were, uh, petitioning a city mayor to develop curb cutouts in their downtown, and the mayor responded by stating I don't see anybody in wheelchairs, why do we need to make curb cutouts? And, and so, uh, that, that really, I have heard that story used in, in many opportunities when it, when it comes to, uh, an inclusion kind of aspect, I mean, it really becomes kind of a chicken or egg, or we're not going to see, uh, you know, inclusion if, if we're not, uh, providing the opportunity for people to be included. Um, and so I, I think that, um, captioning has kind of played a major role. I wanted to, um, elaborate on that because I think that one of the things that's important to note is, you know, people have gotten used to it on their televisions, right. So, and as I had mentioned to you there, uh, it was carried over into workplace, also carried over very heavily into the academic setting. Um, that's probably one of the areas where we have seen the greatest amount of growth, um, is, is within the academic arena for students who have wanted to go to, uh, educational institutions. And when we, when I first started in this, uh, captioning also known as, as CART it's kind of a, uh, a derivation of captioning, but, or, so it's, CART is communication access realtime translation used typically in a, in a one-on-one communication standpoint or in a larger room. And, what, what is kind of happened with that when we first started in this industry, because of the cost, cart was only provided to, I would say master's level students or above. Okay. It was kind of like, that was now how these folks ever got to the master's level. I don't know, uh, from a struggling standpoint, but the powers that be felt that it was, that was an appropriate time to invest into that group was when they were that when they were advanced level students. So we saw that, then we saw it go to the point where it was all undergraduate students had access to these services. And that is still where there is an extreme amount of services okay, being offered. Now we're seeing it in the high schools. Okay. We're seeing the benefit of text services for people, with hearing loss, having to communicate in a larger group and so forth. And, and we had seen the services now being used all the way down to about the fourth grade. Um, and, so the, that entire kind of group of people continues to expand on who can benefit. And we also talked about this and in our, prior phone conversation, but there's, I have found that there's, there's two groups of folks who utilize captions. There are the people who are appreciative and thankful, and there are the people who say, why did it take you so long? And, and many of our younger people, while they are appreciative, I believe that they truly are appreciative, it's just simply an expectation that things are going to be accessible, whereas population my age are, they remember when it wasn't accessible at all and are appreciative of all the opportunities that take place. Doesn't mean that they're content. I am not going to overgeneralize. I mean, I think that folks still want to see more inclusion and more opportunity. But, uh, and it's kind of interesting, those two groups of people, those who are like, wow, I remember when, and those who are going, I can't imagine when, you know, that kind of thing.
[Doug]: And it's, you know, I think it's that, that expectation that younger generations have now having had, being able to grow up with it, being a lot more part of their lives because of the changes that have started with, or were really, amplified by something like the ADA and how that started to shape and mold perceptions in society. So, I mean, I think there is something, you know, what's really great about when you get to that next generation where it's expected, it becomes so embedded in the culture in a way where I'm sure it really helps it become that much more prevalent. And it kind like has this snowball effect, when people have, when people go from being like, man, it's great when we can have this thing to, oh yeah, we should always have this thing. It definitely helps ramp that up. So I'm sure that's, this kind of next generation that grew up with it, I'm sure it's really helped move it to the next level as far as prevalence.
[Phil]: Absolutely. And so, you know, Doug, kind of, a quick side story. So I volunteer at our local high school as part of their business incubator program. So I get to work with high school students and, and, we develop business problems and solutions. Uh, it's an exciting opportunity. So I can remember when I first went into the high school and, I was like, hey, let's grab some paper and let's write this down. And they all like looked at me and, I quickly realized that they are a complete tablet high school. They have no books, they have no paper, they have no pens, everything is done on their iPads. Right. Uh, and, and so that was, that was the first light bulb that went off for me. And then as I talked with them, I quickly realized that the young people today, you know, they have an understanding of technology and the use of technology that I will never have simply because I, not because I I'm ignorant or I don't want to learn it, but they have just been brought up with it and we'll develop it and utilize it in a way that I never will.
[Phil]: And, you know, I think the same thing is what you just said is that they're the generation of people who have grown with this level of accessibility will take it to a whole new level, over time and developing it. Uh, and that's, that's an exciting opportunity.
[Doug]: On that note and you've kind of started to get to it, but what role has technology played in this? I'm sure, you know, not, it's not just, you know, public awareness and perception of captioning and other accessibility services that start to really change the tide, and bring down that, that hourly number from $1,500 an hour to like a hundred dollars an hour. How has technology played a role in really kind of accelerated all of this?
[Phil]: Well, I think that, I think that you see it primarily in like, where people are able to access services. So, for example, when I first started in this industry and, we were developing, I guess it was closer to the year 2000 that we began to develop remote services. Everything was on site up until then. It was a especially trained court reporter stenographer who would go onsite, set up their computer, set up a laptop. The other person would read the computer screen and so forth. It was around the year 2000 that we began to provide remote services. Okay. And, I don't know if any of your viewers remember dial up internet connections, but that was where we started was telephone line dial up. And if you've got a good connection, then you could maybe do a little bit more work if you didn't get a good connection, it just, you were stuck with it. But then, soon after that wireless started and when wireless started that gave us a lot more opportunities to go on college campuses and develop services. Now it was, you know, it was spotty and depending on the campus, you know,I'm, from the Chicago area. We have a number of old universities here where they're heavy, concrete walls and so forth. So it was difficult sometimes to get a good signal. Um, but now fast forward 20 years, wireless internet is everywhere. And, I think like one of the coolest places that we've seen is in, we have worked with some medical students in Wisconsin and, within the medical arena, all hospitals have wireless, including like surgical suites and emergency rooms and there's wireless everywhere. So we have had some physicians who were studying medical students who were studying, and they were hard of hearing and they needed cart services. So on one side of the operating table, you had a nurse who wore an iPad on her chest. And on the other side of the operating table was the physician with hearing loss. And we were able to connect and listen to everything that was taking place in that surgical suite and able to transcribe it. So that doctor was able just to simply by moving his eyes up and down, was able to read everything that was taking place in the room at the time. Um, so, so that's kind of an extreme and pretty cool opportunity and use of captions. But again, technology is what has allowed that, you know, Ipads that are lightweight, internet which is prevalent ,and wireless internet prevalent, virtually everywhere, those kinds of technology advances have really made a difference for us.
[Doug]: Wow. Well, yeah, certainly, you know, there's certain ways in which I, where my mind would go as to how technology has played a role, but certainly would have never guessed this anecdote you just shared about an iPad, that's, where the captions are going to, so that a surgeon can read it during surgery. I mean, that's certainly a great example of multiple technologies at play that's, I'm sure something that you probably never would have imagined at the start of your journey in this space. Um, you know, I want to go back for a moment to that anecdote that you shared about the mayor and the curb cutouts and, you know, what I, what really resonated with me just around accessibility is like, and just, you know, the disability community at large and really any marginalized community is, you know, this kind of thinking from like, say, you know, like a non marginalized community that like, it's like, I don't see them anywhere. Like I don't see it, so it must not exist when you have like, structures that are set up to not accommodate. And then, and then you don't see people in a space or using a service and just assume it's because no one wants it and not realizing it's because you're not setting up structures to accommodate those people in the first place. I mean, it's, it's perfect irony in this situation that you're describing and it's like, why would we take all this time and money and effort to make curb cutouts when I've never seen a wheelchair on the streets? Well, maybe it's because it's not very easy to get around because there are no curb cutouts. So I, you know, I think it's really such an, it really illuminates so much of why universal design and, you know, I've heard it said in other ways as well, but that's certainly an oft used term, universal design, and why being forward thinking and really aware of say in this case, accessibility is so important because for a lot of people in their day to day lives, they might, it might not be something that's an absolute necessity to them, and it might not be in their, in their range of vision on a moment to moment basis. But that doesn't mean that there aren't millions and millions of people that really rely on, or that it's really vital to their lives. And I think captioning is such a great example, because as you said, initially, you know, it was, it was really only used in very choice, specific situations. Um, it was something where in the educational space you'd have to get to the master's level for that to even be something that's possible. And now, not only is it more prevalent for, you know, some of the communities that one might assume need it more, but like in many ways there, you know, I know plenty of people who watch a lot of content with the captions on who aren't necessarily hard of hearing, but maybe they're watching a show. I know a lot of people who watch, like some of those BBC shows who are Americans who don't understand thick accent, like, thick London accents and are using captions to understand the content that they're watching. Maybe you need to, you know, have the TV on mute. Um, even though you can, even though you're, you know, hearing you need to have the TV on mute, but you still need to like, watch some sort of content, you're enjoying those captions. So to kind of, it's just such an amazing example of how assumptions are really dangerous or someone just operating from their own point of view is a really dangerous way to operate, particularly when you're in a position of power, in a decision making position. I think, you'd also shared with me that anecdote about, early on, I think earlier in your career, getting the, those government funds to do captioning for first Chicago news station, that where that ended up getting nixed. I think that's another great example if you could share that.
[Phil]: Yeah. That kind of goes back to the origin of captioning and, and trying to build a need, we received, I was part of an organization that received a grant from the Department of Education, a sizeable grant to provide captioning services for local news. And we went into the city of Chicago, which is where we were based. And we went to the different news entities in Chicago, and none of them would buy into it. They were, they all said, you know, this is not going anywhere. Nobody wants this. We have no interest. And we actually ended up having to give those funds, return those funds to the Department of Education, because no one, no one saw the need at the time. Uh, and so that just really is kind of a, uh, show of how it grows. Um, kind of, another story that I think about when you talk about how people, you know, you say, we don't see anyone who is maybe deaf or hard of hearing. And so, we don't know that they need captions and so forth. There's a large population of people that are part of a group called the late deafened group. People who lose their hearing later in life, long after language has been acquired. And so, they may have very clear speech, and, and you would have no way of knowing that they are not able to hear you or be able to understand you. And we actually worked with an attorney, at a very large Fortune 100 company who had significant hearing loss but she did not want others to know about it. I mean, some of the people within the company knew about it. It wasn't like it was hidden as an employee. But she did not want her competitors, people that she had to communicate with. And as an attorney negotiate with, she felt that they would take advantage of that. So she used captioning services to communicate via the telephone and she built strategies into her language. So she would, she would pause. She would say, well, just a second. Let me think about that. And she would wait to ensure the fact that the captions had come through and were up to date and so forth. And, and then she wasn't missing anything. She didn't want to step over someone. And so, you know, you just never know of the situation and who is going to use them. I believe this statistic is one out of six would be considered a caption user. Uh, and that is before you take loss from sensory deprivation, meaning people who are aging and, and simply are not able to hear as well as they were at one time when you factor in that group, it drops to one out of four can be captioned users. So, you know, I think many of us have experienced time where, you know, we've talked with somebody who may be aging a bit, and they're not able to hear us or understand and so forth. That's like a even larger audience of users.
[Doug]: This is actually, I'm just going to take a quick moment to do an interpreter switch. Alright, Jamie, good to go. Excellent. So continuing here, you don't want another, again, just to kind of bring back to this, the topic we were discussing around there be sometimes this lack of understanding of people in decision making positions of like, what is actually needed or what is necessary or vital. You know, I think that also, again to connect this to the conversations we're having about the ADA, and certainly some things we've discussed on this platform in the past is so much of the need for there being all different types of voices in those decision making positions. Because again, you can't have someone there, if all different types of voices are, are not represented, you're going to have communities that, and again, really large communities like, you know, the disability community at large, or any more specific community within there whose needs are completely not understood and therefore not accommodated. And I think something that certainly we've seen progress around, but it's something that I know certainly is, you know, one of the prevalent themes over the last number of months, has been for there to be more representation and more voices in these decision making positions. I'm wondering, you know, for me personally, it's been an interesting journey, being a part of, you know, certainly a part of the DeafBlind community, and the disability community with this platform, you know, for those who've tuned in, in the past, you might know my personal story of how Feeling Through all got started. It was very much inspired by an encounter that I had with the first DeafBlind person I ever met a number of years ago. And it led to the film Feeling Through which led to The Feeling Through Experience and this platform Feeling Through Live, born out of, you know, getting to really, through that journey, get to know obviously our ongoing partners in Helen Keller Services, the DeafBlind, a lot of people in the DeafBlind community, forge friendships, a lot of people in that community and learn a lot about the disability community through that. But I am someone who is non-disabled, as someone who is, it's still a learning process for me every day. And certainly I have a healthy regard for the, the much that I do not know, even though it's a space where I spend almost all day every day in, in some capacity. So I'm wondering, you know, with you, as someone who I think is in a, in a similar boat thematically, in the accessibility space, how do, how does that, how do you interact with that being someone who's kind of bridging two worlds in being in a space that's, you know, again, not as we've already described, not solely for captions, aren't only for people who are deaf or hard of hearing like you've well described, but that is kind of a lot of what it's born out of in a heavy amount of the user base as is accessibility. How do you kind of like say straddle those two worlds, so to speak?
[Phil]: Yeah. You know, I'll tell you what I was thinking about Doug. I, I don't know if I should go down this road or not, but, but I will here. Um, so, my family was created through adoption. My, my daughter is Asian and we have had some excellent conversations over the years on culture and race. And she has said to me from time to time when we've had a discussion, she has just said, and this is going to seem, some people may find this harsh, but she's like, she'll say, dad, you're just not going to get it because you're the white guy. And, and you just, aren't gonna understand. And she goes, I know you try, and I know you care. And I know you're a good guy, but you're still the old white guy. And I always, you know, I always kind of bristle. I'm like, I can go with being the white guy, but do you have to throw in old on top of it? But you know, I think that applies here. And I think that, what I personally try to do and what AI-Media, the company I'm with, tries to do is we listen. And, and I think that that is the smartest thing that people can do is listen, at least listen first and then potentially act, okay. And figure out how to support other people. The word I like to use is empower, um, because I don't think it is my place to step in for a consumer and say something to a boss or say something to a professor or a teacher or a co coworker. But, we will level the playing field with a consumer and we will let them know exactly what's being said around them. And we might say, would you like us to comment about what you may be able to do with this? If we, if we hear a discriminatory type statement being made or an action being taken, we might ask, but we will always ask the consumer, how can we support you? How would you like us to support you? Some consumers say, you don't say a word ever. You just give me the captions and basically stay out of my life. Just give me the captions. Okay. That's fine. If that, if that's the role you would like us to play, that's great. Other people will say, help me understand this, or what's, you know, what exactly, what was the intonation that a person was using there? Where they being snippy or was that just the way they are, or, you know, they will ask us for further information. But I think that's the key is listen. And, and just, just as I, as the old white guy, okay, need support from, you know, don't assume I don't need anything. I may need support on things. So communicate with me. And what do you need to understand better to do your job better, to go further in this world, whatever it might be.
[Doug]: Yeah. That was really, really beautifully put, and certainly can relate to a lot of what you're sharing there. You know, you kind of brought up, within that you brought up this kind of distinction between, you know, some people were like, when you were talking about, you know, some people are like, just give me the captions and that's it. Or people might have kind of a little bit more of a dialogue there. That makes me think of, you know, something that I know you shared with me before of like compliance versus accessibility. Can you talk about what that means in this space and talk a little bit more about that?
[Phil]: Sure. Yeah. You know, we're, kind of facing that right now. It's a pretty big deal. So, you know, this isn't, this is a, I'm going to make a very generalist statement. Okay. But there, there are many times in the media where, you know,they're, not captioning news and world reports and those kinds of things, out of the goodness of their heart. And in many cases, much of the media is forced to caption and, in the United States, that's compliance. Okay. And so compliance really can be whatever is necessary to get it on the screen. And so the quality may not be there in some cases because, there's not, there's not huge detail around how accurate captions have to be and so forth. So in many cases from a compliance standpoint, you'll see inferior product. Now, that's, in the United States. For example, that's not the case in Australia, that's the home of our parent company. And there, there are huge fines if there are not accurate captions on the screen. So that's, there's, it's different in different parts of the world. I choose to focus more on the accessibility aspect. I think there's compliance and accessibility and accessibility is putting out that best product that you could put out is providing, you know, a service. You have interpreters as part of your, of your program here. You'd be, you'd be surprised at the number of educators that contact us and say, I have a, I have a student that's coming in with hearing loss. I need interpreters. Do you have interpreters? And we'll say, does the students sign? And they'll say, I don't know. And I'm like, well, that's, step one of accessibility is you need to find out what the need is. And then staff the need. They may not be a sign user, not everyone with hearing loss knows sign language. And, so we really try to focus on that accessibility aspect. It's more about the person and working to develop a solution that will support an individual as opposed to one size fits all.
[Doug]: On that note of access accessibility, Alice Eaddy, from the NFADB, just commented about that distinction between captions and interpreters. And that a lot of times there's also this assumption made that, oh, we don't, we don't need interpreters because it's captioned. So we're good. And as Alice was pointing out and something that I've certainly learned, through my journey of accessibility is that there are people whose native language is ASL and that that's really, the accommodation for them is providing an interpreter because, you know, it'd be like someone else who's second language in that case, in their case, which might be the captions wouldn't be as proficient for them as having their native language on the screen, which is, which is ASL. So it's those kinds of understanding those, I don't even want to say nuances because at some point they won't be nuances when they're better understood, is really what about, to speak to the accessibility side of that conversation.
[Phil]: Right. Yeah. I think that, you know, and I think that that's partially just education and helping people understand, you know, we don't think twice about it when it's a spoken language somebody's primary language may be Spanish or might be German, or it could be French or something to that effect. You don't, you don't think twice about it when it's that kind of spoken language. But I think it really is just the educational aspect or people to recognize that American Sign Language is a language and this could be someone's primary language, and we need to support them as such. Absolutely.
[Doug]: Another question here from our viewers, Hillary, she notes, she said she's been excited to be able to easily add or edit captions on some of the online learning offering systems she uses. So she notes, some platforms are still changing, are challenging rather. And she asks, how can you imagine captioning evolving?
[Phil]: Um, well, I think that it's going to continue to get better and get easier. I think that there are, there are going to be different levels of captioning. Um, you know, when, when you think about it, if you take a voice recognition software program and just take it off the shelf and put it into your computer, you probably could get around 90 to 92% accuracy just off the shelf. So when you think about it, 92% is pretty impressive from nothing to 92%. Okay. But the sad part of that is, is 92% is not real usable in an ongoing basis. I mean, the captions that people see on television should be between 97, 98% accurate. And we still see quite a few mistakes, right. And, and it can be challenging. So where automatic speech recognition tends to break down is around punctuation is around proper nouns. Those kind of things, which are really pretty critical. Okay. But it's getting better and it continues to get better. And so even as, as, as a leading captioning company, we're looking at ASR, automatic speech recognition and where that fits in our product line, it is something that is going to have to be utilized and be built on. And, so, you know, we're, we're looking at it to make things easier, the market, the market, I don't know if you know this or not, but the captioning market has with COVID has gone absolutely insane. People are captioning things that never captioned them before. And part of it is the online laws that have been established. Um, but, but also what we're finding is people were able to communicate better one-on-one and they were able to get along or be able to understand now with things being online and the internet, not always getting a good connection and you can't control somebody else's microphone that, uh, they have found the need to have captioning for online materials. And it, I just, our staff is, I mean, we have hundreds of uncovered jobs because we can't keep up with it. And there are all the companies are listing across the board trying to find coverage of secure people to provide this service and so forth. So we're just seeing kind of it just explode. So when you have that kind of problem, you're going to start looking at alternatives. People are going to be looking at how can we utilize these off the shelf products to make things accessible, but we're going to have to couple that with quality to make sure that it's good.
[Doug]: Yeah. And, you know, I was going to ask you, you beat me to it, how the pandemic has really played a role in this. And as you've just noted there's been a lot more captioning happening. You know, I know from connecting with a lot of people during this time that it's actually created a little bit more of a level playing field, if you will. Being that, you know, with some of the accessibility features that are becoming synonymous with various video chatting platforms and other platforms that it, there are a lot of people who've told me, and I'm certainly, there's the other side of this too in which things are less accessible, but they're in certain ways there's been more accessibility for some people in various meetings and conversations than they had previously when something was in person. So that's kind of one of maybe the silver linings of what's happening right now, at least to some degree. Um, and again, a way in which technology is, is playing a really big role in that, you know, I know that, you know, on our side of things in trying to make things as accessible as possible, you know, today, for those of you, you know, for Feeling Through Live we simultaneously broadcast to Facebook and to YouTube. So for those joining us on Facebook, they'll see automatic captions being generated that Facebook introduced not too long ago. They are actually, again, myself having played around with a lot of automatic captioning programs, they're actually quite good, relatively speaking again, like you said, they, they can only be so accurate, particularly the punctuation aspect isn't necessarily spot on. But quite, quite usable. On YouTube you'll see, if you're watching on YouTube, you won't see any live captions.
[Doug]: We add, I go back and add much more accurate captions to both platforms after the fact. But again, YouTube being, you know, behind the curve here, their requirements being something like meeting 10,000 subscribers, and it's still being rolled out slowly, even to those larger pages, which we're not at yet. Um, and really, you know, hopefully we're getting to a point where, the, what Facebook is doing is the norm for any, of any platform, particularly ones that are widely used. I know John who's joining us notes that many videos on Instagram and Snapchat have absolutely no captions or are subtitled, unless someone goes out of their way to post it as such. And he asks, how can we help to provide access in those spaces?
[Phil]: Right. Um,that's, a great question. And, I could, I can go back and look it up. I, it just came out yesterday. One of those two providers, has announced that they will be providing, or that they are now providing online accessibility. So I can't remember if it was Instagram or Snapchat, but one of them just announced yesterday that they will be providing a similar service, like Facebook, like YouTube, like, you know, some of the, some of the other folks. Um, and so, you know, I mean, I think that, again, you're, you're seeing that, you know, they're looking at it probably more from a compliance standpoint. Okay. And, and that's, that's my opinion. Uh, I don't, I'm not, I have nothing factual to back that up, but, I think that they are looking a bit at a compliance standpoint. But like for example, Facebook, one of the things that Facebook has done is they have the basic compliance aspect, but our company, in fact, AI-Media has an interface with Facebook, so that if you want to have high level accurate captions, you can book directly with us. And so you can, you know, you can get the base level or you can get a higher quality level. And I think that's what you're going to see overall is that you're going to see there's this baseline, or maybe people who are just, you know, flipping through the videos and watching different things, just, you know, sitting in their living room, that level of accuracy doesn't have to be as high, but for people who want to actually watch a webcast, listen to a podcast, be a part of a live streaming event there, the quality is going to need to be higher. And people like Facebook have in fact built that capability into it. So you're going to see that.
[Doug]: And, you know, to that point, you know, Ai-Media obviously does plenty of captioning work, but that's not all Ai-Media does. Can you, can you talk about some of the other elements of accessibility that Ai-Media provides?
[Phil]: Sure, sure. So probably the two that come to mind in particular is audio description with which I'm sure you and, and your viewers are familiar with. Um, but, and, we provide two levels of audio description, an actual human who will narrate, we also have a synthetic voice, and what, where we have used that because we're a global company. So we're all over the place. Um, we have had to do audio description, so we've taken English speaking programs, but the audio description might be in French. Okay. So, so we have multiple languages that we can change it into synthetically. So, you know, we can have an English version and a French version, and we're working with a number of different Asian countries as well. So a Chinese version so forth. So that's kind of a, a little bit of a nuance when it comes to the audio description. The other program that we have, is a service called Scribbler that has been used in the, uh, the, the Asperger autism spectrum. And so one of the things that we've found is through one of our, uh, staff in England is a specialist in that area. And she designed a program that basically, uh, well, this is a rather simplistic view, but it strips out a lot of the, uh, kind of the adjectives and, and extra language that can be distracting to someone who may have a form of autism. So if you remember the phrase, just the facts, just give me the facts, uh, that that's kind of how the service operates. So we listen in an educational arena and then we strip out all of the extra language, and then we give captions, the captions tend to help people focus. So they're rather than maybe looking all around the room, they're able to focus specifically on the captions on the screen, and it's simple text, and they're able to, to access that simple text. So those are two different, as well as captions, and then, you know, changing captions into multiple languages. We're seeing that it's, I think that's kind of a cool thing. We'll do a conference in English, and now we're doing things remotely. Doug, but we'll, we'll do it in English, but it will be in 10 different languages simultaneously, going out to all different parts of the world. So pretty, pretty cool opportunities.
[Doug]: It is really cool. And, you know, I, again, as someone who's always trying to learn more about accessibility, certainly very familiar with audio description, and we've used that ourselves, but it's interesting to hear some of the nuances of how it's being applied, how your company is applying it, and some of the ways in which technology is, is creating some, some new options there. Um, yeah. So, you know, with kind of the, the final kind of moments that we have here today, I'm, I'm wondering, I guess I just throw it to you. Is there anything, you know, that we haven't covered, that that's something that you'd like to note on your end?
[Phil]: No, I think, I think that you have, have covered it quite well. I appreciate the opportunity. Um, I, I think that, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of ironic that, uh, a presentation on captioning is summed up in the word listening. Um, and, and I think that that is really, um, what people could take away is that, you know, we need to listen. We need to understand what the need is, um, and how we can meet that need for people with hearing loss. Um, you know, we're, just seeing an enormous growth and need, you know, we oftentimes have, have commented that if someone is utilizing a service in all their academic classes, most likely they could utilize this service in other walks of life, too. I mean, people are not simply hard of hearing or deaf in one environment. Uh, they're harder hearing and deaf through throughout life. So, uh, there, there is a and understanding that needs to take place, uh, in, in whatever, you know, kind of whatever path you cross, uh, it needs to be there. Yeah.
[Doug]: That is a beautiful closing statement there, I would say. Can you tell people who are interested in learning more about Ai-Media, perhaps need your services, where they can find more information?
[Phil]: Absolutely. We certainly are on the web, uh, and that is, uh, uh, a now, um, now I'm drawing a blank, even on our website, AI media dash, or dot tv, is the it's, it's ai-media.tv, is the website and I'm more than happy to answer questions, uh, be an educational resource. There's tons of information there as well. Uh, and, uh, we'd be happy to, uh, answer any questions.
[Doug]: And I will add to that, that I suggest following Ai-Media on, on social media, on Facebook in particular, not only do you guys have a really large following there, but are constantly sharing a lot of very interesting content, you know, in and around the accessibility space. So, um, a lot of really interesting content that's shared there, I've certainly learned a lot, uh, about what you, you know, what, from what you've shared there. So I encourage viewers to follow your social media as well.
[Phil]: Yeah. Thank you. I forget that. I, I'm not a huge, remember I'm the, I'm the old guy, right. So I'm not as into the social media side of things, but, Facebook, uh, is, has been a really strong opportunity for us to share a lot of really positive information.
[Doug]: Yeah, well, absolutely. Well, again, Phil is really a pleasure having you on today, um, and, and looking forward to, uh, you know, connecting more with Ai-Media and learning more about what you guys do over time as well.
[Phil]: Thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity. Thanks. And thanks to the interpreters who make my words accessible. Thank you.
[Doug]: And thank you to all of you who tuned in today. Um, one more reminder. I know some people asked us in the chat for those of you who, uh, maybe missed our last Feeling Through Experience and want to tune into one of those, The best way to do that is to go to feelingthrough.com, sign up for our mailing list. We are going to announce our next screening of that, our live stream, rather of that event probably within the next several days or week. So definitely sign up there. You'll get all the information you need, and also follow us on social media. If you're watching on YouTube, follow our Facebook page, facebook.com/feelingthrough, if you're watching on Facebook, subscribe to our YouTube page, where we're putting up lots of great content. So, and, uh, yeah, we'll, we'll see you next week, same time, same place for another episode of Feeling Through Live. Have a great weekend, everyone. Bye.
[Phil]: Thank you.