Disabled Association Pros & Accessibility Allies

If you are hosting a webinar, meeting, class, course, or program and have contracted for a live human CART captioner (or even a a lower level of live human respeaking captioner) with a captioning provider, these are things that have to happen to make that live human captioner connect with your program.

• CONTRACT for live human/CART captioning.
  
• SCHEDULE your event with your captioning service.
  
• SEND the live human captioner a link to your event in advance so they can plan to join your event.
  
• SHARE names of speakers, the organization hosting, the topic, the program overview, and any unique terms that will be important for the audience that may be unique to your group with your captioner in ADVANCE of your event.
  
• ADMIT your live human captioner to your event 15-20 minutes in advance of your program.
  
• ASSIGN the live human captioner the rights to produce and display captions in your event.
  
• TEST with that live human captioner (in your green room or before you admit attendees) to ensure that speaker names are displaying, voices are clear enough for them to hear from your speakers/panelists, and that accents are understood.

If your webinar, course, class, program, meeting, or activity is not doing these things - you most likely DO NOT have a live human captioner.

*Bonuses with live human captioners - you can also ask for language translation in dozens of languages so that your language translations are based in accurate and usable captions.

This is why understanding disability when it comes to digital accessibility is part of what each team needs to understand.

WHY?

• Live human captioners and CART captioners are trained to understand the importance of accurate and usable captions.
  • This includes speaker names, grammar, punctuation, and sounds. The goal with captions is to provide an equitable text relay of what is spoken and heard.
• Live human captioners produce quality accurate captions - yes some AI is getting pretty good, but how many mistakes can you afford to make and be respectful and accurate?
• Live human captioners provide well synchronized captions with no more than a 2-3 second delay from the spoken words.
  
  

ADDED TIP:
If a DHH person tells your team that they can tell the captions are AI - and you haven't done the above, please don't tell your DHH attendee that they are live human captioners or tell them to go read a website describing live human captioning. 
When speaker names are not present - first sign
When speaker names for the panel are spelled incorrectly - second sign
When years are listed as numerals (2024 is 2,024) - third sign
When key words are incorrect (George Floyd's murder is presented as George Floyd's mortar) - fourth sign

There are key elements that differentiate AI captions from well done human live/CART captions. You can watch for them as well.