Captioned Viral Videos

Rarely has viral videos on YouTube ever been captioned simply because the originator of the video didn't take the time to include captions.

VIRAL videos may be good for sharing ideas and spreading funny foreign pop hits, but they are also leaving millions of deaf and hearing impaired people out of the loop. 

Online video is becoming a more ubiquitous part of American life. Netflix videos made up one-third of online data used in the United States last year. YouTube expects 90 per cent of online traffic to be video in the next few years. By 2016, Cisco estimates, 1.2 million minutes of video will be streamed or downloaded every second. 

That video explosion has been great for small-film and TV producers, who are able to reach an audience without a big studio budget, and fans of niche programming. But in some ways, it has left the deaf and hard-of-hearing community starting from scratch after years of advocating for captions on traditional television.

Forget YouTube's speech-recognition software since most times it simply doesn't work well and you get a bunch of garbled nonsense captions, especially when background noise or music interferes with the speech-recognition process. So much for inclusion but they are certainly trying their best. But should a Federal or company's regulation be done to ensure that these independent videos uploaded by hearing John Qs be captioned or else it cannot be uploaded at all? Which is better? By force via regulatory fiat or by gradual educational awareness by making captioning fun and popular?  I'd say the latter is better. Otherwise if it's the former by regulatory force then I'm sure people would like to see it be equally done for deaf people who upload their signing videos without captions as well. That's the idea. Provide open communication access to hearing, deaf and hard of hearing people with different languages whether it's by sign or speech. Just because you're deaf doesn't supersede hearing people's need on wanting to see what's being said in signed videos.

Be a positive role model when it comes to uploading your video by including captions whether the video is in voice or by sign. Others will soon get it and start including captions.

Technology is king for deaf users when it comes to communication

Technology is the key to success for deaf and hard of hearing people. It is true today and it will be more so true into the very near future when it comes to helping provide communication to deaf and hard of hearing with the rest of the world. Google has come out with a new fangled technology that has been in the works for some years called Google Glasses where it hints at speech-to-text display for deaf users:

Perhaps most interestingly, one patent shows Google is working on a system to help hard-of-hearing and deaf users detect and interpret nearby sounds. The glasses' heads-up display would show arrows and flashing lights to indicate the direction and intensity level of the sound, and even display the words nearby people are speaking. The patent, #8,183,997, was issued to Google today and is titled "Displaying sound indications on a wearable computing system." The system would integrate a speech-to-text feature that determines the text of speech and displays it for the wearer of the glasses.

This concept on augmented reality will be a boon to deaf and hard of hearing users in the near future by allowing the extra-dimension of space, time and information of sound and visuals through the use of these glasses.

How valuable is communication?

You heard the old adage about setting up a successful business and that's "Location, location, location!" But when it comes to ensuring success in everyday lives, especially in the world of business, it's "Communication, communication, communication!" no matter who you are dealing with.

So, how valuable is communication among deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing people? Is it social value? Business value? Personal value? If you're a business entrepreneur or a deaf/hh worker who deal with hearing people on a daily basis how valuable would communication be? If you had a product that ensures a free and open communication with anybody who knows how to type would you use one?

We already saw a glimpse on just how valuable communication is when YouTube (owned by Google) announced their first ever voice to text recognition service on their website enabling greater communication access to potentially millions of people who are deaf and hard of hearing. This is a smart and savvy marketing move. Exactly how valuable is automatic voice-to-text communication when it comes to voice or speech recognition technology? What about voice messages on your phone into text like Google voice as seen in this captioned video? How valuable would it be between two different languages over the phone? Voice recognition technology isn't perfect yet as you can see here in this latest video which is already shown to be extremely error prone (and something I think could in fact turn out to be a PR nightmare for Google/YouTube if it's really that bad).

For deaf and hard of hearing people communication is obviously quite valuable and that technology will be the answer in helping level the playing field. There is already one device that allows face-to-face communication called "UbiDuo" which enabled one Sam's Club employee who is deaf to communicate among his peers, supervisors, and customers and because of that he was able to get himself promoted 3 times.



How valuable is communication when it comes to business? In Sam's Club case the UbiDuo was worth more than its weight in gold because it helped increase productivity and efficiency. The Sam's Club manager as seen in the video realized that it was "Communication, communication, communication!" that made the difference and recommended that a face-to-face communication device ought to be in all retail outlets.

It would definitely help every retail establishment. Any retail establishment that wants to connect with anyone hearing impaired needs something like this product. Because it's very impersonal without it. But with it you can talk to them, you can get their needs, you don't have to guess. You know exactly what they want. And it makes the member or customer feel better because they feel like they have some power now versus before they were kind of hoping they found what they needed and if they didn't, oh weel, they probably didn't ask.

Sometimes it takes a communication product for somebody to realize the importance of just how valuable communication is in the world of people who are deaf and hard of hearing, and doing business with them is all about communication, communication, communication!!