[community] Zoom vs Google Meet for captions?

Fri Nov 6 12:11:47 UTC 2020

Cybele,

I wouldn’t want to regulate a field like live captioning (CART), as there’s already fairly intensive training, standards, guidelines, rating systems (but how well do they work?), certifications, best practices, and even regulations involved (in the case of broadcasting).

Automated captioning is a different story. It's still evolving, still very much beta, much better than a few years back, and in different situations, it’s not perfect, not close to human captioning, but quite useful. But is it “good enough”, and "good enough" for whom? 

Is Otter better than Skype or Google Groups? Can remote meeting participants do things to help deliver better quality captioning? For example, does the mic’ing quality matter? should participants be more mindful of their enunciation and speed? Do we need to be in a room without a ceiling fan?

As you point out, automated captioning is attractive to many organizations, especially in these pandemic times where many of us are connecting remotely, as it comes cheap or free. It’s one thing to have human captioning at the occasional event but another entirely to provide captioning for multiple zoom meetings each week.

It’s would be a step forward to undertake a robust evaluation of the effectiveness of automated caption services being currently deployed for online meetings, as well as gain knowledge of various and diverse end-user experiences. 

It would be helpful to come to an understanding of what “good enough” automated live captioning should look like for different types of meetings and different users. 

Sounds like a grant with a lot of co-design/co-lead involvement. 

-c

> On Nov 5, 2020, at 11:34 PM, Cybele S <cybele.sack at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Charles,
> 
> It would be helpful to have a ranking system for these software captions with something akin to a grading scheme.  It would also be helpful to include add-on auto captions and live editable auto-captions in this.  Manual captions are obviously harder to rate as it depends on the individual involved, but some kind of separate professional standard would be good too, if we want to get into licensing people.
> 
> Putting it on the individual organization or host of a zoom talk is fair enough, but leads to challenges as Ushnish has raised, where some of these hosts are highly under-resourced and well-meaning.
> 
> The cognitive load you describe should be unacceptable and we need to get services up to a higher standard ASAP.
> 
> Captions have been an ongoing concern pre-covid and can in certain circumstances fall into undue hardship if the expectation is for a small host of very limited means being required to pay for a highly professional captioner for every meeting.
> 
> There needs to be a solution to this problem, especially now that do much work is being done remotely, where digital tools ought to be widely available and of a quality that doesn’t create cognitive load barriers.
> 
> I wonder if a ranking chart with links to choose the higher ranking options might be a good start.
> 
> What are your thoughts?
> 
> C
> 
> On Thu, Nov 5, 2020 at 10:43 PM Charles Silverman <charlessilverman at me.com <mailto:charlessilverman at me.com>> wrote:
> My experience, as someone with hearing loss, is that quite often with automatic captioning, too much goes missing, too much is left to guesswork.
> 
> If the goal is to provide meaningful access, that is, engagement and participation for people needing captions, please use trained human caption writers (stenographically trained captioning is best, and voice writing, where the caption writer uses Dragon Dictate, isn’t bad).
> 
> I’ve spent a lot of time during the pandemic using depending on some of the available automated caption services such as Skype, Google Meet, Zoom (if you subscribe to one of Zoom’s professional packages), or available to you as a user in the form of an App for your iPhone or Android phone.
> 
> Most of my energy when using these services goes into attempts at re-constructing what I think I’ve heard, applying whatever context I have to work with. There’s a lot of cognitive overload in a process that often results in less than useful comprehension. It doesn’t help that with automatic captioning speakers are not identified, and basic grammatical conventions e.g., commas, question marks, periods, etc., go missing. 
> 
> There’s a lot more that could be said, but the skinny is, if you are the person organizing these events, have some mechanism for evaluating the quality and usefulness of the caption service that you’ve selected. 
> 
> 
> -Charles
> 
> ______________
> Charles Silverman, M.Ed.
> Sessional Instructor, Accessibility & Inclusive Design
> Disability Studies, Ryerson University
> Email: csilverman at ryerson.ca <mailto:csilverman at ryerson.ca>
> 
> 
> 
>> On Nov 5, 2020, at 9:35 PM, Brian Moore <bmoore at screenreview.org <mailto:bmoore at screenreview.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> I can't really comment on captions since I don't use them much. I have played with the auto captioning in teams just for fun while I was in a meeting I could actually hear and my screen reader actually did read me  pretty good captions.  All of them are fairly good for screen readers although zoom has done some extra things.  Personally, I am happy with whatever we pick that can include everyone.
>> 
>> 
>> Contact me on skype: brian.moore
>> follow me on twitter:
>> http://www.twitter.com/bmoore123 <http://www.twitter.com/bmoore123>
>> 
>> On 11/5/2020 8:43 PM, Cybele S wrote:
>>> I've heard some people say Zoom is more accessible for screen reader users
>>> and other people prefer Microsoft Teams.
>>> 
>>> This article says Google Meet is better for captions and someone else
>>> recently told me that as well.
>>> 
>>> What solution do you all use for synchronous meetings?
>>> 
>>> https://www.fastcompany.com/90565930/im-deaf-and-this-is-what-happens-when-i-get-on-a-zoom-call?fbclid=IwAR2gI_zmOBpRGDcOZ0_dMK6PdOYp-KyrgVybTXF_7kQyO2cyEtv207_lcNw <https://www.fastcompany.com/90565930/im-deaf-and-this-is-what-happens-when-i-get-on-a-zoom-call?fbclid=IwAR2gI_zmOBpRGDcOZ0_dMK6PdOYp-KyrgVybTXF_7kQyO2cyEtv207_lcNw>
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