Tool may help deaf with webcasts
Speech-recognition system could make captioning quick, less expensive
From: The Journal News (Westchester, NY) - 10/25/2005
By: Julie Moran Alterio

The IBM research team started a project called CaptionMeNow to create a tool
that would caption a webcast only when a deaf person asks for it. "When
someone who is deaf or hard of hearing comes across that webcast and wants it
captioned, they click a CaptionMeNow button," she says. 

The video is processed through IBM's speech recognition system and
automatically captioned. Because speech recognition software still isn't
perfect, the transcript then could be routed to a human editor for quick
fixes before posting online. 

Alexander Faisman, a software engineer who works closely with Dimitri
Kanevsky (master inventor at IBM), says a human translator needs to be in the
loop in part because the English language has so many words that sound
exactly the same. 

"We know that the technology is not perfect. There are many situations when
you need a very accurate transcript, or not that accurate, and it can all be
translated into cost and time of the editing," he says. 

The CaptionMeNow project builds on IBM's earlier work to help a Canadian
university caption lectures only when deaf and hard-of-hearing students are
present in the classroom. 

IBM is using the technology to caption Web lectures for company employees -
and it's not only popular among the deaf. 

"It turns out hearing employees are also using the technology," Kanevsky
says. "We found that even hearing people sometimes prefer to read a lecture,
because they can read very quickly."  

Read the entire article at:
http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051025/LIFE/510250323/1004

Links:
CaptionMeNow - The Answer for Webcasts?
http://deafness.about.com/b/a/212526.htm

IBM products and research technologies
http://www-306.ibm.com/able/solution_offerings/captionmenow.html

New technology aids hard-of-hearing students
http://www.charlatan.ca/articles/2004/12/02/stories/80605.html

Accessibility, transcription, and access everywhere
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/443/bainaut.html

Speech Technologies: Captioning, Transcription and Beyond
http://www.nynj.avios.org/Proceedings.htm

Dimitri Kanevsky
http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/pr.nsf/pages/bio.kanevsky.html

Contributed by Jamie Prioli