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HN is a community where people solve difficult problems for a living. So someone using "difficult" as a reason for something doesn't really fly with me. As for

by bphogan 12y ago

HN is a community where people solve difficult problems for a living. So someone using "difficult" as a reason for something doesn't really fly with me. As for expensive? I'll agree. Going cost is about $1 per minute minimum. And they're not releasing that material "for free." Make no mistake - it's either because they got a grant (that's what we face) or part of some marketing thing. I apologize if it sounds like I'm frustrated and angry, but I run into all sorts of inaccessible things created for the web by people who use "difficult and expensive" as the go-to excuse. If you are preparing a video for something online, you should be planning it and writing a script, which you can easily turn into a transcript. If it's a lecture recording, well, workstudy students can transcribe it for you and caption it. These are all things responsible educators do. Proudly.

wyager 12y ago
>If you are preparing a video for something online, you should be planning it and writing a script, which you can easily turn into a transcript. Please don't presume to tell content providers how they should produce content, or presume to tell them that a part of the process is easy. That's not up to you to decide for anyone but yourself. >These are all things responsible educators do. Proudly. Nice; insult the awesome folks over at MIT and Harvard who are giving us this material for free because they are "not responsible". I'd be a hell of a lot more proud releasing content that happens to be inaccessible to deaf people than never releasing anything at all because I'm afraid of getting sued under the ADA.
- handojin 12y ago
  You seem angry and you are constructing a false dichotomy. No one is arguing that content should not be released, just that content, produced in institutions which are recipients of federal grants, should be made available to the widest possible audience. What is the standard by which we define 'widest possible audience'? Reasonable accommodation. Your argument reduces to a statement that it is better for Harvard and MIT to offer this content without making an accommodation for certain individuals (of class D), because: a/it is unreasonable for them to do so b/certain individuals (of class A) benefit It's an interesting argument, but one you've introduced no facts in support of.
  - wyager 12y ago
    >No one is arguing that content should not be released, just that content, produced in institutions which are recipients of federal grants, should be made available to the widest possible audience. Take a step back and look at the potential side effects of what the plaintiff is asking. If a university, with all their money already earmarked, is told that if they want to keep distributing free educational materials then they must pay to transcribe them, what are they going to do? A very likely outcome is that they're going to scrap their free educational materials program. It doesn't take a lot of foresight to see this. Also, how do you define "widest possible audience"? Should the universities be legally compelled to translate all videos into Chinese as well? There are a lot more Chinese speakers than deaf people.
derekp7 12y ago
I'm curious, is it just as expensive to have someone produce a transcript of a video, vs. captioning it? Because I'm having a hard time coming up with the 60 dollars per hour or more figure. Lets say you slow down the video (using one of the techniques that doesn't alter the audio pitch), so that it matches your typing speed. Then you can transcribe it in "real time" (i.e., without having to stop, back up, and restart the audio). And it would easy to have the software record timing information (if the transcription is done real time). So slowing down the video to half speed, means a half hour video takes an hour to transcribe. At a labor cost of $15.00 per hour, that is 25 cents/minute of video. Much less if it is off shored. Edit: Would it be helpful if Google added a captioning interface to YouTube? That is, an adjustable playback speed (which they have now, but I'd like to see more speed levels), and a capture window where users (volunteers) could provide captioning of any video, including educational ones.
- PeterisP 12y ago
  In practice, professional transcription requires 5-10 times longer than the source material, depending on its content. Slowing down to half speed and listening to it once isn't enough. You need a first pass to write all of it down which is usually not done with simple playback at half speed (which isn't that easy to understand) but instead with foot pedal switch for pausing and rewinding. It takes much longer than the video (well, depends on the video - different speakers speak at very different speeds), and at least a full pass re-listening everything for proofreading. Technical videos take extra time - you often need to take minute or two to clarify a single term that you don't know, verify that you're not confusing it with another word and that it's spelled properly; and during an hour-long video such terms and the required time add up The same goes up for surnames - it takes a second to blurt out "paper by Mumblemumble et al", and it takes much longer to transcribe that even if the paper can be looked up in other related documents (and not always it can). A single neccessary clarification + a few related emails to solve it already can taka half an hour. Captioning is some extra work in getting sure that the written segments align with the speech - it basically means that you have to note the start/end information, usually it's done at the initial transcript stage by the play/pause switches (the software packages apply the previously played segment start/end timestamps) and then you need to adjust many of them in proofreading. Not really an extra stage, but takes more work and care. Transcribing at double speed, as you propose, is not really practical. People speak at 130-180wpm. Decent typists usually type at 65-75wpm. At that rate you would barely manage to 'type what you think you hear right now', which is usable for some purposes not really a transcript.

by bphogan 12y ago

wyager 12y ago

>If you are preparing a video for something online, you should be planning it and writing a script, which you can easily turn into a transcript. Please don't presume to tell content providers how they should produce content, or presume to tell them that a part of the process is easy. That's not up to you to decide for anyone but yourself. >These are all things responsible educators do. Proudly. Nice; insult the awesome folks over at MIT and Harvard who are giving us this material for free because they are "not responsible". I'd be a hell of a lot more proud releasing content that happens to be inaccessible to deaf people than never releasing anything at all because I'm afraid of getting sued under the ADA.

handojin 12y ago
You seem angry and you are constructing a false dichotomy. No one is arguing that content should not be released, just that content, produced in institutions which are recipients of federal grants, should be made available to the widest possible audience. What is the standard by which we define 'widest possible audience'? Reasonable accommodation. Your argument reduces to a statement that it is better for Harvard and MIT to offer this content without making an accommodation for certain individuals (of class D), because: a/it is unreasonable for them to do so b/certain individuals (of class A) benefit It's an interesting argument, but one you've introduced no facts in support of.
- wyager 12y ago
  >No one is arguing that content should not be released, just that content, produced in institutions which are recipients of federal grants, should be made available to the widest possible audience. Take a step back and look at the potential side effects of what the plaintiff is asking. If a university, with all their money already earmarked, is told that if they want to keep distributing free educational materials then they must pay to transcribe them, what are they going to do? A very likely outcome is that they're going to scrap their free educational materials program. It doesn't take a lot of foresight to see this. Also, how do you define "widest possible audience"? Should the universities be legally compelled to translate all videos into Chinese as well? There are a lot more Chinese speakers than deaf people.

derekp7 12y ago

I'm curious, is it just as expensive to have someone produce a transcript of a video, vs. captioning it? Because I'm having a hard time coming up with the 60 dollars per hour or more figure. Lets say you slow down the video (using one of the techniques that doesn't alter the audio pitch), so that it matches your typing speed. Then you can transcribe it in "real time" (i.e., without having to stop, back up, and restart the audio). And it would easy to have the software record timing information (if the transcription is done real time). So slowing down the video to half speed, means a half hour video takes an hour to transcribe. At a labor cost of $15.00 per hour, that is 25 cents/minute of video. Much less if it is off shored. Edit: Would it be helpful if Google added a captioning interface to YouTube? That is, an adjustable playback speed (which they have now, but I'd like to see more speed levels), and a capture window where users (volunteers) could provide captioning of any video, including educational ones.

PeterisP 12y ago
In practice, professional transcription requires 5-10 times longer than the source material, depending on its content. Slowing down to half speed and listening to it once isn't enough. You need a first pass to write all of it down which is usually not done with simple playback at half speed (which isn't that easy to understand) but instead with foot pedal switch for pausing and rewinding. It takes much longer than the video (well, depends on the video - different speakers speak at very different speeds), and at least a full pass re-listening everything for proofreading. Technical videos take extra time - you often need to take minute or two to clarify a single term that you don't know, verify that you're not confusing it with another word and that it's spelled properly; and during an hour-long video such terms and the required time add up The same goes up for surnames - it takes a second to blurt out "paper by Mumblemumble et al", and it takes much longer to transcribe that even if the paper can be looked up in other related documents (and not always it can). A single neccessary clarification + a few related emails to solve it already can taka half an hour. Captioning is some extra work in getting sure that the written segments align with the speech - it basically means that you have to note the start/end information, usually it's done at the initial transcript stage by the play/pause switches (the software packages apply the previously played segment start/end timestamps) and then you need to adjust many of them in proofreading. Not really an extra stage, but takes more work and care. Transcribing at double speed, as you propose, is not really practical. People speak at 130-180wpm. Decent typists usually type at 65-75wpm. At that rate you would barely manage to 'type what you think you hear right now', which is usable for some purposes not really a transcript.