When I give a presentation, I always preface it: “I can only share my experience as a deaf person because we’re all diverse.” We’re all different. Some of us are born deaf. Some are late-deafened. Some of us wear hearing devices. Some don’t. Some of us learn to speak and read lips. Some of us … Read more
You review your captioned video one more time for caption mistakes. It contains no typos. The captions sync up with the audio. They have a blackish background with a whitish font. The captions show no signs of any leftovers from automatic captions aka autocraptions. That means it’s captimized right? Captimize is my term for captions … Read more
Would you publish an article on your website if it has typos and other errors? Well, then. Would you publish captions on your website if it has typos and other errors? That’s what automatic captions are and why I call them autocraptions. Automatic captions are like a person or synthesized voice speaking flatly without inflection … Read more
Content accessibility isn’t just the responsibility of the design and production team. It’s everyone’s job. OK. Maybe content marketing doesn’t know to add ALT text to images. Maybe a salesperson doesn’t know PDFs need to be accessible. Maybe a graphic designer doesn’t know about contrast beyond complementary colors. Do you detect a theme here? I … Read more
Out of the blue, I received multiple messages pointing to an article on TMZ about an accessibility lawsuit. It had a sensationalist headline: “Peloton Sued: Deaf Folks Need More Guidance!!!” Before I opened the article, I could feel myself getting riled up for two reasons. The first being the headline. The second reason comes in … Read more
Do you buy DVD or Blu-rays anymore? They still have one thing you typically can’t get watching videos on-demand, online, or a streaming network. The special features. The bonuses. The something extra. However, when I check out the extras, I keep my expectations low. It’s because a lot of them don’t have captions. Something I … Read more
My son is a high school senior. [Pause for dramatic effect.] Of course, it makes this mama emotional. More so because Zachary is the youngest of three. Senior year. You know what that means. Yup. College application time. Time for Zachary to do marketing … himself. But the college process starts long before they’re seniors. … Read more
Someone tagged me in a post that contained a video showing how to caption with an app. As a caption pusher, it excited me. It takes a village to educate folks about why and how to caption videos. That and to spread the word to follow and use #Captioned when posting captioned videos. #Captioned is … Read more
If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s this: prepare for the unexpected. No company can think of every possible scenario that will happen. One of the first things to do is to create a process. There’s always going to be a need for a process or making a change to one. And believe … Read more
One good thing came out of COVID-19. It forced me to try video calls again. The reason I don’t love video calls is that I miss too much. While I’m a strong lipreader, video calls have a few challenges. Why I shied away from video calls The turning point Automatic captioning guidelines for video calls … Read more