Disabled Association Pros & Accessibility Allies

This was really exciting, for those that rely on accurate and usable captions.

During the Fridays at 4 Society discussion on 8 December, someone in chat mentioned that they were pleased to see captions and ASL at events (likely annual).

I commented that those were AI captions, and the quality was so bad (that the context was not readable/usable).

@Maunda Land, MBA CMP, CAE, was proud to say that ASAE has a commitment to CART captions.

She's checking to verify that means actual CART captioning and to see if that includes educational programs. 

This would be a HUGE improvement towards equitable access for so many people, not only DHH people!

Details about captioning below:

Accuracy in captions has a high impact on the comprehension and understanding of the content. There are two accuracy rates, Word and Formatting.

For every 1% error in every 1,500 words there is a 10% loss in comprehension or higher (depending on the importance of the word in context).
Formatting includes grammar, punctuation, speaker names, and sounds. 

How many errors have you observed in AI captions?
Consider the cognitive load that adds to anyone relying on the words, content, and/or context to understand what is being presented.

CART captioning, or what most people know as court recorders, are trained in the needs of DHH people AND accuracy (97-98% accuracy) with more than 150 words per minute. It's truly impressive.

Happy New Year @Maunda Land, MBA CMP, CAE!

What's the word, are you able to confirm actual accurate and usable CART captions as was mentioned in the December 8 Fridays at 4 Society webinar?

------------------------------
Samantha Evans, CAE, ICE-CCP, MBA (she/her)
The Accessible CAE
sam.evans@accessibilityassociation.org
Certification Director
Intl. Assoc. of Accessibility Professionals, a division of G3ict
------------------------------

I'm on a paid webinar from ASAE about DEIA - I asked if this is CART captions, the staff member responded that these are "live captions from 3Play Media."

sidenote there was no disability or accessibility representation in the webinar about DEIA.

(edit on 29 January) 3Play Media confirmed that while ASAE has contracted for live human/CART captions, they did not invite or share the date/time/access for the DEIA webinar, so no human captioner was able to join.
While there was an interruption in the AI captioning - they had no disruption in human captioning. 
So don't let the technical issues with AI captioning distract you in this event.

Live is a word that vendors use to avoid what accurate and usable and what CART captions means.

Live captioning is not the same as Live Human Captioning or CART.

Human captioners will be meeting with the webinar team before the event starts, will be assigned the captioning tools (that do NOT display icons for names), would have talked with and tested to ensure the human captioning worked. 

There were no speaker names, this is a hallmark for human captioning. Instead, the captions came through Zoom's AI captions that only showed icons. 

Other telltale signs that these were AI captions:

Years were presented as numbers, instead of 2024 it was 2,024
ASAE was misspelled repeatedly
DEIA was a wide variety of different letters and numbers
Murder was mortar - and no, there was no confusion when Tim Hopkins said George Floyd's murder he did NOT say George Floyd's mortar
Company names, of the speakers, that the human captioner would have had in advance, were misspelled ASHA was ahser 

The technology issues experienced only impact AI captions, if HUMAN generated captions loose connection, the AI captions will appear. That is not what happened today, the AI captions disappeared. 

I'll share the transcript to show all of the mispellings, missing speaker names, etc as an example.

If ASAE cannot commit and will not commit to CART captions - I suggest you revisit what SHRM faced. We should not have to FIGHT for access. It's 2024.
ASAE has had what accurate and usable captioning means (the public has had this information since it became law)

Disabled professionals, disabled ASAE members, disabled people deserve access. It's exhausting!

------------------------------
Samantha Evans, CAE, ICE-CCP, MBA (she/her)
The Accessible CAE
sam.evans@accessibilityassociation.org
Certification Director
Intl. Assoc. of Accessibility Professionals, a division of G3ict
------------------------------