Screenshot of a BSL video

Some of you will know about my project to get British Sign Language content on our corporate website. For the background to this, see the original business case and my experiences in the studio filming the videos.

Last week I got the BSL videos from our audio/visual unit, with all the audio editing complete, bringing us a step closer to getting them online. All I needed to do was add the captions and run them past our BSL expert one more time, to make sure nothing had been lost in translation.

With impeccable timing, Henny Swan blogged about captioning earlier today so I’d encourage people to read her post too as I’ll be referring to her findings here as well.

Online captioning tools

Due to my employer’s IT policy, which means I can’t install software onto my work PC, I’m going to have to settle for online captioning tools. This limited me somewhat, but I was hopeful that I could find something suitable.

YouTube itself recommends CaptionTube, but I’d also heard good things about YouTubeCC, so I decided to give that a go first.

YouTubeCC

YouTube CC

To start, make sure your video is uploaded and processed on Youtube. Next, go to YouTubeCC and enter the URL of the video that you wish to caption. This will bring up the video on the left with a box for the captions on the right.

The idea is that you play and pause the video, tapping in the captions as you go and adding them to the box on the right. YouTubeCC automatically adds the start times, according to where you’ve paused the video.

The first issue I encountered was that there seemed to be no way to preview the captions on the video itself, as you enter them. This makes it impossible to judge whether you have given each caption enough time on-screen, or whether you need to split them up.

Bigger problems were to come, though, upon completing my first video. Clicking the Export to YouTube button brought up the following error message:

Warning:
Some of the captions/timecodes are bogus and will not be added to the export.
Do you want to export anyhoo?

I have no idea why the captions or timecodes should be ‘bogus’, and could see no obvious error, so I went ahead and exported anyway, which enabled me to save the captions as a .sub file (YouTube requires either sub or srt file formats).

Adding captions using YouTube CC

Finally, heading back to YouTube and clicking on the Captions buttons under the video, on the My Videos page, it was a simple case of uploading the .sub file. The results weren’t bad – no sign of the bogus captions or timecodes – but as per my first concern, the timing was not perfect and some captions were far too brief. Also, captions remained visible until the next one came along, which in some cases was not ideal. I realised that you have to insert blank captions to achieve breaks between captions, which seemed a little convoluted.

Overall, then, I found YouTubeCC not bad but lacking features necessary to get really tight captions. Perhaps I wasn’t using it properly – I’d welcome suggestions or advice!

CaptionTube

Caption Tube beta

Next I thought I’d go back to YouTube’s original suggestion, CaptionTube. Henny has already done a great job of reviewing the pros and cons of this one, but I thought I’d add a bit more about some of the things I liked and disliked.

I really liked the timeline at the bottom. Anyone familiar with editing software such as Final Cut Pro will be very comfortable with this kind of interface. Unfortunately, it appeared to lack some of the functionality you might hope for, such as the ability to drag, drop or resize segments.

Caption Tube's timeline

Another feature I liked was the ability to set the duration of a caption. A fairly essential feature, I’d say, but having seen the difficulty of doing this in YouTubeCC I appreciate its existence here.

A definite down side was the need to swap between two pages to edit the captions then preview them. This slowed the process considerably, and although the Preview option is very welcome, I can’t help thinking it could have been integrated more usefully into the main view.

Caption Tube requires you to go to another page each time you want to preview your captions

A final plus, though, is that Caption Tube connects directly to your Google/YouTube account so there’s no need for a separate login.

Overstream

Overstream

Next up, then, is Henny’s preferred option – Overstream. Unlike the previous two, this one requires that you create an account. There’s no obvious privacy policy which is not great, and the password length can only be 10 characters long, far shorter than my usual hyper-secure passwords! Nevertheless, I duly sign up.

The first problem I encounter is the Overstream doesn’t appear to be able to access videos that are not yet public on YouTube. I guess this makes sense, although it wasn’t a problem for the previous two sites. Even using YouTube’s Limited Access URL option doesn’t seem to work. I don’t really want the video to be public yet, but to use this service I don’t have much choice (and can always hide the video again after adding the captions), so I temporarily make the video public.

Overstream has a handy demo video showing you the main controls so after watching this I plunge right in.

A screenshot of Overstream's interface

It’s immediately obvious that many of the issues I had with the previous two services have been addressed here. You can see the captions immediately appear on the video, each caption is given a default length which you can easily adjust, and you can drag and drop each individual caption on a global timeline.

Once finished, you can save the captions, or ‘overstream’, for editing at a later date, and can then export as a .srt file.

Uploading the .srt to YouTube worked a treat, and the timing was much better than before.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Overstream appears to offer by far the best online tool for captioning that I’ve used so far. The other options are ok, but far more basic and not without their faults.

I can’t show the results just yet as I promised to let our BSL signer have a look first, before it went public. I’ll be sure to update my blog as soon as the completed videos are online.

Camera and bluescreen set-up

I’ve just got back from a busy day filming BSL videos – simple, short clips of a person signing key content taken from the website. For the whys and wherefores, see my previous post on Deaf Awareness Week and BSL videos online. In a nutshell, many users have BSL as their first language, with written English being their second language. Offering content in the form of a BSL video takes this into consideration, showing that we are aware of the needs of these users and ensuring they have optimised access to information offered online.

Preparations and requirements

Before the day I prepared five scripts, taken from key pages on our website. It was my estimation that each video would last between 90 and 180 seconds. The idea was to identify content that was high-level enough not to need regular updating – i.e. an overview of a particular service with contact information and maybe a weblink to further info. These were then passed to our signer to read through and prepare the BSL.

On the day we had the signer and another deaf colleague to assist with checking the signing, as well as an interpreter. We were told that ideally our signer would have brought two interpreters, but a second one was not available for today’s session. This meant that the interpreter spent all day speaking and signing, which must have been quite a drain on her. We aimed to stop for breaks whenever required, although there was a concern that stopping for too long would break the signer’s momentum, so we ended up taking a rather late lunch too!

As we had planned to add the audio in post production, we did not need a location with perfect acoustics, although in future it might be possible to record the interpreter’s voiceover live and have that accompany the final video, to save on production time.

Lights, camera…

We prepared a room with a blue curtain backdrop and a video camera positioned about two meters away. On the day, no additional lighting was required although it may have been necessary to position additional lighting on the signer and backdrop to ensure that the two were distinct.

We also set up a mic so that the interpreter could sit to one side and interpret the signing aloud in real time. In post-production we will use the interpreter’s commentary to help us ensure the correct timing for the official voice over, as well as the closed captions.

…and action!

Each video required only four or five takes, taking between 30 minutes to an hour depending on the complexity of the content.

Flip-chart with script prompts

The signer set up a flip-chart behind the camera to serve as a memory prompt for the reading order of the content, as well as an aid for any tricky sections (for example, lists or contact details). She also had various discussions with her colleague about the best way to get across particular concepts in BSL, as certain phrases in the written English did not work as smoothly once signed.

I was on hand to give clarification about any particular points in the script, and to make sure that the overall message was maintained. This was particularly important with some of the scripts, where the descriptions of processes or services had to be accurate and specific.

While it would have been possible to film each script in chunks, reconstructing them in post-production with subtle cuts, we actually managed to get each one perfect in single takes. This will make editing far easier.

Contact details and web addresses

Although the original scripts involved the signing of key contact details and web addresses, it was generally felt that it would be better to offer these as on-screen text against a plain background at the end of each clip, to avoid any confusion that could arise by trying to follow the signing and the text at the same time. It was also observed that users could then simply pause the video to write down the information, rather than potentially needing to watch the signed version more than once.

Next steps

Our Audio/Visual technician will now edit the clips, adding the contact detail screens and opening titles for each video. I’ll then be back in the studio next week to oversee the adding of a voiceover track for each video before we finally add the captions and upload them for all to see! I’ll blog here again once we’ve gone live. In the meantime, if you’ve got any questions or comments, do get in touch!

improve understanding of the different types of deafness by highlighting the many different methods of communication used by deaf, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing people, such as sign language and lipreading.

Deaf Awareness Week website – www.look-at-me.org.uk

For a while now I’ve been working on a business case to pilot a project, offering key content from our website in the form of video of a British Sign Language interpreter. The following is an extract from that business case, explaining why such content could be valuable:

Scotland has an estimated 758,000 deaf or hard of hearing individuals (according to RNID stats). Of those, 57,000 are severely or profoundly deaf, and may use British Sign Language (BSL) as their first or preferred language (usually the case where the individual has been deaf since birth or early in life). A report by CLAN Edinburgh estimates the number of BSL first language users in Edinburgh to be 1,000 – 1,500 . This compares with 1,698 registered blind persons in Edinburgh in 2003 (by Scottish Government figures).

Individuals who have BSL as their first language may find it harder to read written English, as concepts unique to BSL can interfere with the learning process. Differences include word order, inflexion of verbs and lack of certain articles.

The Government officially recognised BSL on 18th March 2003.

Many organisations offer key online content in video format, with an interpreter delivering the content in BSL. An excellent example of this can be found on the British Deaf Association website. This is also increasingly being implemented by a number of local authorities.

Screenshot of a BSL video from the BDA website

A Scottish Government 2005 report on access to public services for BSL users suggested a serious lack of use of certain key areas, including social services, education and libraries. 54% of the people asked felt that they never accessed services from their Council.

Comments included:

• “We need more BSL information on the Internet like Deafstation.”
• “I think getting the information from the computer would build more confidence for Deaf people…”
• “Now we look for any web site that has BSL information, since Deaf people are interested in that website…It is more important to have BSL on the website.”
  

Offering certain key content in BSL Video format via the website represents one of a range of accessibility features which can enhance the inclusiveness of the website. It will help us engage with its deaf community, showing ourselves to be proactive in addressing their needs.

Audience

Target audience

The intended audience for the video content would be all individuals for whom benefit would be derived in accessing the information in this format, over and above the traditional online formats. Primarily this would be individuals who use BSL as their first language, but other groups who could benefit include:

• the blind and partially-sighted (assuming audio description is included)
  
• those with low literacy or other primary language
• those with a learning disability such as dyslexia

Secondary audience

It is also expected that the general public and professionals, both locally and nationally, will have some degree of interest in the videos.

Benefits

Encourages Inclusion for all

Such content would continue the efforts of the Council to be socially inclusive by improving the accessibility of one of its key channels of communication with its citizens. This could be measured by comparing usability results prior to and following implementation, as carried out with volunteers from the BSL community. It is expected that accessibility should be significantly improved for these individuals.

Provides a precedent

If successful the project would provide a compelling precedent for similar future developments. Video content can also be utilised for the benefit of citizens with other needs, as outlined above.

Exemplifies Best Practice efforts

The project would offer evidence of best practice in regards to accessibility and inclusion, and could be high-profile and prominent enough to encourage national interest and favourable coverage.

Risks

Cost of video production

Due to the high cost of producing video content, it would be difficult to amend or update, or to produce new content.

Increased demand for more BSL content

If the initial video content proves successful, this could generate requests for other information to be made available.

Increased demand for similar audio/video content

This approach could benefit citizens with other needs, such as individuals with dyslexia, low literacy or English as a second language.

No guarantee of service

Where a third party service (such as YouTube) is used to host the video content, no contract of service exists. Therefore, no guarantee can be secured regarding the permanence, availability or quality of service offered. No recourse is possible in the event of loss of such service, and a contingency plan is necessary in the event of such loss of service.

Project underway!

The project is now underway, and I’ve made contact with a local deaf literacies worker who will give us support in making the videos. We have a dedicated Audio/Visual unit who can produce high quality video, and have started work on identifying the sort of information we want to present in this format.

Once we’ve launched I’ll blog about here, of course. In the meantime, I’d be really interested to hear from other organisations who are looking at, or already doing, this on your website.