Marion Dawson: Captions, not craptions! Human captioners and notetakers (BSL)

I’m an Electronic Notetaker and Captioner. I’ve been working in this role for 20 years – providing notes and captions for D/deaf students at college and university, and in live theatre, workplace meetings, community events – you name it. I love my job, and I thought I would write something about it, as many people don’t know about us. 

Why summary notetakers? 

D/deaf people who use British Sign Language or lip-reading to communicate are unable to take their own notes at college or university or in workplace meetings and training. For the hearies reading, this is because you can’t watch a sign language interpreter or somebody’s lips and write notes at the same time. Unlike a hearing person, a D/deaf person stops receiving information when they look down at their notebook or laptop, because they needs to take their their eyes away from the interpreter or speaker.

A professional notetaker is trained in D/deaf awareness and is skilled in condensing information to an accurate summary which is accessible for D/deaf people to read. It’s not the same as taking notes for yourself, when you may choose to focus on certain areas and/or use shorthand.  A professional notetaker must pay equal attention to all aspects of the lecture or meeting and use language that is clear to another person. They may also take instructions from the D/deaf person. For speed and editability, they are often ‘electronic’ i.e. completed on a laptop.

Why live notes/captions?

For deaf people who don’t use British Sign Language, lip-reading is very tiring and not reliable. Live notes or captions (subtitles) enable them to follow a lecture, meeting or other live event accurately. The live notetaker/captioner must have accurate, high-speed typing skills, and will usually use specialist software which allows us to programme short-cuts. The deaf person follows the captions on a second screen. Just as with BSL interpreters, the notetaker will usually need a co-worker for this sort of work, as it is very demanding

Cut-backs

It’s not surprising that Tory government cut-backs came for D/deaf people just as they came for other disabled people. Disabled Students’ Allowance which paid for notetakers in universities was cut by around one third in 2015. The department I was working in told me that in future all lectures would be recorded and captioned, so universities would not need to employ so many notetakers. Sounds great, right? In theory, yes, it would be great if all lectures were recorded and had captions, as then they would be accessible to all. People would not have to apply individually for notetaking support. But I wasn’t convinced these captions would arrive and that they would be good quality. If the aim was to save money, they wouldn’t be paying humans to make them.

Covid 19 and since

Fast forward to the Covid 19 pandemic, and online lectures with recordings and auto-captions become the norm. How brilliant! Except that no-one seems to know or remember that captions were already available for in-person lectures – provided by humans. Or they used to be, before funding was cut. It is quite galling to hear professionals such as BSL interpreters saying how brilliant that auto-captions are now available while I am right in the room with them! But if auto-captions are just as good as my captions and easier to access, perhaps I should shut up and look for another job. After all, it’s not my pride that matters, it’s access. Except that what we’re seeing is NOT access.

Today many lectures are now in-person, with some still online and some pre-recorded. However, recorded lectures are not the norm, as my former manager predicted they would be. Disabled students who need recordings have to fight for them. I’m no longer booked to take notes in all of my student’s lectures, as some of them are pre-recorded and supposed to have auto-captions. Except they never do have auto-captions. And no matter how many times the student and I flag this, it does not change. This leaves me short of working hours, which affects my well-being and income, and the student is missing out. It also means I struggle to understand some of the seminars, because I haven’t seen the lectures that correspond with them. This is also bad for the quality of the notes and the student’s learning. Sadly, my worries of 2015 have basically come true. 

Why not auto captions?

For a short period, my student enjoyed being able to access some of her lectures with auto-captions – when they were provided. However, it is clear that it’s not working as a long-term solution as they are not consistently provided. 

When they ARE provided, many auto captions are not good quality. You can’t caption something you don’t understand without risking making serious mistakes. Have you seen YouTube’s auto captions? D/deaf people deserve better than this. When someone’s education and future is at stake, it’s particularly serious. 

Auto captions can’t respond to different people’s needs the way a human can – for example, they can’t adapt to the D/deaf person’s level of English or capture and explain things like humour or sarcasm. Auto-captions can’t advocate for deaf users’ needs the way humans can (unfortunately yes, we still have to do this). For all these reasons, D/deaf users in the US call them ‘craptions’.

To add insult to injury, captioners fear that Zoom is using humans’ captions to train the AI auto-captions which are putting us out of work. This is very unfair, especially as they are not paying us for it! After a backlash, Zoom put out a disclaimer, but their current terms are not reassuring. At least one US captioning company said their trust had been damaged and they would not caption directly into Zoom as a result. 

Captions are not a new idea, they have been going for years. Human captioners and notetakers have never received the investment and support in the UK that they should.  This has become worse since the Tories. Auto captions cannot provide the quality service that human captioners and notetakers can. It can seem like there are not enough human captioners and notetakers, but actually lots of people are leaving the profession because of cuts in funding which have led to low fees. Auto-captions are making this worse. D/deaf people have a right to human captioners and notetakers and should ask for this. We have the same interests and should work together. 

Marion is a member of the Association of Notetaking Professionals and the Theatre Captioner Network and is writing in a personal capacity.