Watch: BBC Newswatch item on live subtitles (with live subtitles)

What appalling subtitling!

Lags, errors, frozen dregs while the speech continued. The “45 secs with no subtitles” announcement was especially special (read patronising, annoying, pathetic and symptomatic!) – not even fixed later while the programme is still up.

That’s what NAZZES me off about iPlayer and subtitle problems they’re SO SLOPPY, no one quality checks them before upload, they’re not even fixed a while later. There IS *no* way to report iPlayer subtitling faults to the BBC in a way which gets them fixed before the programme expired. If the sound was broken it’d be fixed or the programme would stay up longer.

I phoned the BBC via TextRelay and emailed repeatedly explaining that I was denied access to the party leader debates EVERY time due to subtitle fails and all I got was locked into automated email loops with the BBC who could not have cared less. That was the final straw and I terminated the TV licence soon after as I won’t give my money to an organisation which enrages me so much by considering deaf and hard of hearing people very low priority citizens.

I love the BBC and think it is important to have public broadcasting but given their lack of commitment to subtitling and accuracy I won’t give them money where I can help it until I’m a 1st class citizen like the Hearies.

iPlayer had £150m spent on it initially yet subtitles were not built in, they were an “after thought”. “Oh we can’t do subtitles for iPlayer cos of $bullshit-technical-non-reasons”. They could have done subtitles for iPlayer if they’d designed the system all along to have subtitles.

I got to spend years while lots of my friends and colleagues could watch streamed TV content and I couldn’t watch it. In fact I still can’t for many broadcasters including sometimes the BBC because the subtitles don’t sodding work. I am wary of trying to watch series non-live because it only takes one episode with broken subtitles to ruin the whole experience and ignite my *RAGE* button. So I watch almost no TV and pay the price by people thinking I’m weird because I don’t have any TV cultural references.

I’m sick of subtitle apologism “it’s so hard” “we try really hard” “We’re getting better every year” I don’t buy it. If there aren’t enough stenographers then the BBC could invest in a training programme. Speech recognition captions are HOPELESS for subtitling and realtime relay captions – give me stenographic methods every time. Speech recognition is rubbish and I hate it, stupid idea and a waste of money and energy.

I don’t claim to be reasonable on this topic it makes me too cross because nothing much has changed. All that happens is we deafies are left out of each and every new technological audio and video revolution because no one considers subtitles at the very start. We don’t consider subtitles part of the main package of broadcast materials – so films are subtitled multiple times because the subtitles are “copyright” (dirty word in itself I find when it’s used to block access!) and aren’t done once by the broadcaster like the video and the sound and shared properly.

Until the law FORCES broadcasters or producers to have high quality, high quantity and reliable subtitling at source which MUST be shareable so all copies must have subtitles nothing will change.