Captioning Services

Real time text for calls and live events

Overview

Captioning services convert speech into text so that people who are deaf or hard of hearing can follow spoken content. Communication Access Realtime Translation, CART, uses trained stenographers or captioners to produce verbatim text in real time for meetings, lectures, courts, and events, either on site or remotely. Respeaking is an alternative in which a trained captioner repeats speech into speech recognition software. Automatic speech recognition captioning has improved substantially and is now built into video calling platforms, smartphones, and presentation software, though accuracy varies with audio quality and accents. Broadcast television captioning, open or closed, developed in the 1970s and 1980s and is required for much programming in many countries. Cinemas offer open caption screenings, caption glasses, and seat mounted displays. Captioned telephone services apply similar technology to phone calls. Captions are also widely used by hearing people, for example in noisy environments.