-
Categories
-
Recent Posts
-
Archives
- March 2013
- February 2013
- November 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
-
Feeds
Youtube’s New Technology Brings Captions to the Deaf Community
By MIGUEL HELFT
Published: November 19, 2009
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — In the first major step toward making millions of videos on YouTube accessible to deaf and hearing-impaired people, Google unveiled new technologies on Thursday that will automatically bring text captions to many videos on the site.
The technology will also open YouTube videos to a wider foreign market and make them more searchable, which will make it easier for Google to profit from them.
While the technology can insert captions only on English-language speech, Google is giving users the choice of using its automatic translation system to read the captions in 51 languages. That could broaden the appeal of YouTube videos to millions of other people who do not speak English but could use the captioning technology to read subtitles in their native language.
The speech recognition technology that Google uses to turn speech into text is not new; Google currently uses it to transcribe voice mail messages for users of its Google Voice service. But Ken Harrenstien, a deaf engineer who helped develop the automatic captioning system, said the technology had never been applied on such a large scale.
“This is something that I have dreamt of for many years,” Mr. Harrenstien said, speaking through an interpreter. “To see it happen is amazing.”
Full Article here