Subtitled Youtube access for deaf people
Posted by Ian Noon on March 5, 2010
Happy day. Youtube have confirmed there will be automatic subtitling on its English videos.
Back in November, Google announced it would be aiming to do this. Today’s announcement confirms it for Youtube. The story has already been covered on BBC news and the National Deaf Children’s Society has done a statement on it..
It’s not going to be 100% accurate, as no speech recognition software is perfect. Not ideal but I know that many deaf children and adults are quite adept at filling in the gaps and working out what was meant to be said. And, of course, telling everyone about the funny bloopers. My favourite blooper is when someone on TV said “Help yourself.” The subtitles reported it as “Help your elf.” I still chortle thinking of it.
Anyhow, the Youtube announcement now puts the pressure on others to follow suit. I won’t name names because everyone knows about my grudge against the BBC’s lack of online subtitles, even for stories about deaf people. Some good news as we go into the weekend though. Are others happy about the news too?
The Great Ping said
Youtube’s automatic caption thing is awful. TheGreatPing.com’s YouTube captioning service, however is excellent and cheap.