Deaf or hearing impaired

Live or real-time captions are provided at schools, universities, conferences and workplaces. The Ai-Live system uses a trained captioner working remotely, transcribing live speech into captions which appear discreetly on the student’s laptop. This gives Deaf and hearing impaired students direct access to teacher instruction via text.

If the school chooses, a transcript of the lesson can also be provided. This is important as unlike students with hearing, those who are Deaf or have hearing impairment cannot lipread, read captions and take notes at the same time.

Mavericks will come installed on Apple’s desktop computers and laptops including the iMac, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air, while iOS 7 will come installed on Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad.

In its media release, the ACMA states that the ABC did not provide the service required “as the live captions that were broadcast were not adequately synchronised with pictures on the screen. There were also problems with inaccurate and missing captions.” Another issue identified in the investigation reports was that colouring of the captions, which is used to indicate different speakers, was inconsistent.

The ACMA was given the power to draft the new standard as part of amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act which were passed last year. A series of meetings were held in which ACMA consulted with community representative groups, broadcasters and caption suppliers while formulating the standard.

The program, the first of its kind in the southern hemisphere, is designed to cater to the interests of people with a disability, policy makers, device manufacturers and software developers.

The mobile Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Training Centre will travel between special needs schools in disadvantaged areas. The centre will focus on the basics of using a computer, including Microsoft Office, and the web. The training is designed to help children with disability from underprivileged backgrounds escape poverty and gain employment later in life.

The project is in keeping with the South African Government’s plan to help people with disability integrate into mainstream society.

Ofcom notes that the quality of pre-prepared captions (which are called ‘subtitles’ in the UK) is generally very good, and the majority of complaints it receives are related to live captioning. As caption quotas have risen, so have the number of programs being captioned live. Most of this captioning is now undertaken using speech recognition technology, but this is imperfect and errors are common. 

Following consultation with viewers and representative groups, Ofcom has concluded that the four key dimensions that affect the quality of live captions are:

That compromise is one that allows exhibitors to screen captioned movies across a wide range of sessions where the captions are seemingly ‘open’ to those that are wearing filtering glasses, very similar to 3D glasses. The glasses do not carry projection equipment making them lightweight and less bulky than current captioned cinema eyewear such as Sony’s.

Scott has had a long career in access. He was formerly CEO of the Australian Caption Centre (the not-for-profit organisation from which Media Access Australia grew), and has a long-standing commitment to captions being of the highest possible quality.

In February 2012, Lockrey was summoned for jury service in Lismore Court in northern NSW. He wrote to the court and requested live captioning be provided for him during the trial. After much correspondence, Lockrey was informed that captions would not be provided and that he had been excused from jury service because he is Deaf.