Digital Subtitle Fail

The virtual mediasphere is being analysed and (re)defined at a blistering pace and yet in the drive to hook in social media, standards are being to slip in traditional media organisations.

One of these ‘slips’ in the inability to provide quality subtitles for the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, something which didn’t go unmissed on the Twitter channel thanks to the campaigning work by Pesky People (@PeskyPeople #subtitlesnow). 

So what’s the problem with the new digital broadcasting frequency that has been introduced in the United Kingdom?

The old analogue broadcasting system allowed for a subtitling service to be combined with the signal and delivered flawlessly to the audience, and this system was called Ceefax and was activated by using the remote control command of 888.

Now the Ceefax system had three main characteristics:

1. Not pleasant to look at
2. Strangely familiar
3. The same age as me

Now I don’t want to get into trouble about the politics of why providing services under the new digital network have ended or been replaced although that would be nice but more to return to the point of starting this blog post to begin with, which is...... is it possible to create a subtitling service based on current and emerging developments.

Voice to text is one of those technological achievements that hasn’t really lived up to expectations, although a successful application in the ‘real’ world would be a game changer and maybe a DIY developer team in the United Kingdom might have shown the rest of us what is possible.

Using a Pi raspberry using the Debian operating system, a few tablet devices, microphones and visual glasses to relay text to the user, the team showed that it is possible to not only convert voice to text but to translate it in real time with only a small amount of delay to allow the system to cope with the requests.

**Next blog post will be a continuation of this theoretical discussion examining in more detail this and other applications that will allow us to providing a online subtitling service.

Further reading:

Raspberry Pi User Guide

The Debian Administrator's Handbook: Debian Squeeze from Discovery to Mastery

The Social Media MBA: Your Competitive Edge in Social Media Strategy Development and Delivery

Additional Online Reading:

Ceefax switch-off: Twitter pays tribute - The Guardian

Social Media: Evolving From Broadcasting To Conversation - Forbes.com

Buzz about programmes - BBC

Accessibility Now!

The Olympic games opened in London last night the celebrations began with an almighty bang and the United Kingdom came alight with excitement.

www.london2012.com

The BBC being responsible for the broadcast and with being an organisation that is supported by the people of Great Britain through a special licence fee agreement enforceable by law, you would have thought that this great innovative organisation would have made the broadcast accessible.

Well sadly not according to Pesky people!

Pesky people are involved around the space in digital media where “Disability meets Digital - campaigning to improve digital access for Disabled and Deaf people”

~ Peskey People’s mission statement.

Accessibility on the web is an absolute discredit as the programming talent is available to provide integrated accessible online services and yet at this stage of online technological development, creators and producers of online content still do not plan for the additional time needed to ensure accessibility is met for their audience.

The larger technological companies are trying to support new techniques to convert speech to text, like YouTube’s automatic captioning facility, but in a recent blog by Pesky People on their website this type of approach isn't working.

www.peskypeople.co.uk

Pesky People's Blog: All the Bells – what happens when London 2012 fails to addsubtitles

URL: http://www.peskypeople.co.uk/2012/07/all-the-bells-what-happens-when-london-2012-fails-to-add-subtitles/

Personally I think that we are engrained as a task based society in the western world and that we forget that we also need to be responsible for the content that we produce, and that responsibility should be planned into the work pattern at the point of conception not simply injected at the end of a project. 

**Tomorrow blog post will be a theoretical discussion on a possible innovation to provide high quality subtitling to mainstream broadcasting services using current and emerging technology.

Further reading:

Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance

Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity

Designing the Future