Deafness+and+Youtube

Deafness and Youtube

Youtube allows users to not only view user submitted video content but also to post content and discuss content. Because it is utilized in these ways often content is created by the demand of the audience. When a viewer sees a need it isn’t hard to ask around and find someone who can post what you need through comments and private messaging. Many users take it upon themselves to create that content when they see the demand. Because it is easy to utilize on both ends it has become an efficient way to show people how to do things. According to [|www.jeffbullas.com] it has become the second fastest growing search engine.

The deaf community can use many Web 2.0 tools with relative ease but in the case of Youtube it can be a bit tricky. Youtube is a visual media but it is auditory as well. A great deal of information comes from spoken directions or content. It is not a requirement for Youtube videos to be captioned by the person generating the content. Youtube has an option to create automatic captions (i n Europe they are called subtitles) using speech recognition software. Upload the video you have created, go to video manager, click on the video and click on the automatic captions choice. This is different from the add captions choice. The program will automatically add captions. These captions may not be perfect, however, and there is a way to edit the captions to correct any mistakes. To do this you need to download the video to your computer, open in notes, and change the captioning. Although this is an easy option, it is not perfect and may take about twice as long as creating and loading the video itself. If this were a requirement it may inhibit the use of Youtube as it would become a far less user friendly process to create the content. There are other programs that will automatically caption for you. In many of these you must subscribe to the service and sign in. Dragon Dictate is one such software that will analyze audio and create captions. Another such program is VoxcribeCC. As you watch the video, captions are added in real time, and you may edit in real time as well. This software takes a little time to set up, but has the benefit of watching the program create the captions in real time as the video is playing, and allows you to edit the automatic captions as they are created. Here is a link below to the software's website. https://voxcribe.com/Video%20Speech%20Recognition%20Captioning%20Subtitling%20Software%20Download.html

Recently, a start up call Live Time Closed Captioning System (LTCCS) has created software that will create captioning for live conversations on a Google Glass-type device. This is to aid deaf individuals who can not lip read or for those who do lip read but only understand the normal 30 - 40 % of words spoken. With this technology, deaf people would probably still read lips for most of their communication, but would be able to rely on the technology to fill in gaps and supplement when the speaker's words are not clear. Here is a link to a spot on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

It should be noted that speech recognition has come a long way since the software-connection has gone from device-based to web-based. By using the web to translate sound into text, software has access to much higher order computing power and spoken references. A possible downside to this is the lag time that is almost inevitable when using a web-based system. A deaf user can not wait to "listen" while the program is buffering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDz9-MUxrgA

There are several ways to overcome this obstacle. The most cumbersome approach would be using an interpreter to translate the video to American Sign Language. This would clearly be inconvenient but in a learning environment could probably work in a pinch. There are many newer technologies to assist with this issue as well. Youtube offers some advice on their site. They now have a tool that provides automatic captions. This tool isn’t always accurate and videos may not automatically be captioned for several reasons. In the case of inaccurate captions it is possible to tweak the automatic captions to make corrections. Also there are also many types of software that allow content creators to add their own more accurate captions. With a greater awareness of the limitations people with disabilities are facing certainly the number of non-captioned videos will become fewer and fewer.

[] [] http://web.jhu.edu/disabilities/faculty/types_of_disabilities/deafness.html