Silenced again: Time to make video-conferencing and TV broadcasts accessible to the hearing impaired

The Covid-19 lockdown forces people to rely on technology for almost all communication. In some cases, people spend hours on screens, fatigued by the intensified digital interaction or frustrated by audio and visual distortions if they don’t have fibre connections. For people with hearing impairments, communicating with work colleagues, friends and family has become a lot more difficult.

The Covid-19 restrictions have greatly challenged our “normal” way of life. People are worried about their income, businesses, jobs, food for their families and their futures. The fortunate ones are working from home using modern technologies such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, Whereby, and similar internet-based video communication platforms to get through the demands of the working day. Many already had some of this technology at home or were equipped by their employers to function from home.

Being enabled to keep in touch with colleagues and family and friends, locally and internationally, also goes a long way to relieve the mental tedium and loneliness of lockdown.

In the first weeks of lockdown, people quickly encountered the challenges of staring at a screen all day while hosting or participating in video meetings – the exhaustion, headaches and blurred vision that comes with it. Others lacked sufficient bandwidth on ADSL and 4G to enjoy the full benefits of these platforms, so their communication was riddled with audio and video distortions and background noise. A good fibre connection seems to be the best option, but it is not always affordable.

Hearing impaired and deaf persons using these platforms in the workplace are facing additional challenges. It seems that the voice recognition software is not yet sufficiently accurate and reliable to support them during meetings. Accessibility features, including audio and video enhancement and captioning/subtitling, often don’t work optimally.

Captions provide the audio dialogue in text format but include other background noise, such as “wind blowing” or “leaves rustling”. Subtitles provide a text format of the dialogue only and don’t indicate the background noise. Both can be closed or open. Open captions/subtitles cannot be turned on or off by the user. They are permanently on the screen for the duration of the broadcast or meeting. Closed captions can be turned off by the user if the decoder or computer software allows this.

Most of these internet meeting platforms provide closed-captioning/subtitling and other accessibility features. However, most also require either a business package or an extra premium. Zoom provides for closed captioning/subtitling, but the big drawback and extra expense is that it requires one of the participants to type up the conversation in real-time. This requires skill and it is expensive to hire a qualified note-taker or stenographer.

The very nature of these apps might make them suitable for phone users participating in individual face-to-face conversations, but not for large meetings, which require a computer. If you are using a portable T-coil system or Bluetooth streamer connected to your phone or computer, this can override the speakers and thus the apps will not work as intended.

Most hearing-impaired or deaf South Africans cannot use or even understand SASL. Captioning or subtitling would benefit the hearing impaired, many of the deaf and also those who do not consider themselves hearing impaired but might struggle with accessing the spoken content of the news broadcasts.