July 27, 2024 • 55 mins
George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law 34 years ago today, July 26, 1990. It literally changed our world, from cub cuts, and wide doors, to ramps and more. What is less reported is the secondary and ‘law of unintended positive consequences’ that come with inclusive design. More accessible for one is more accessible for all.
Meryl Evans has been championing the benefits of closed captions, and closed caption best practices for decades. Born ‘hearing free’ her experience with captioning is very personal, starting with the special home unit hooked up to the TV.
Doing captions well will increase the consumability of your content by orders of magnitude, for an audience far larger than the deaf or hard of hearing. Adding layers options ensures each viewer get’s the asset that matches their learning style, be that text, audio, video, or graphics.
Please join me in welcoming Meryl Evans to Turn the Lens in this World Premier Event
Meryl Evans: Captions, Clean, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious | Turn the Lens podcast with Jeff Frick, Episode 35
#Captions #Clean #Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious #Accessibility #ADA #Leadership #Education #BestPractices #Learn #Caption #AmericansWithDisabilitiesAct #Simple #Boring #EasyToRead #Information #Scan #Interview #Podcast #TurnTheLens
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Well I am so excited for this.
I am so excited Meryl.
Me too Jeff I'm excited to.
All right so we will goin 3, 2, 1
Hey welcome backeverybody Jeff Frick here
coming to youfrom the home studio
for another episode of‘Turn the Lens’
And I've been trying to get this guest on for a while,
and maybe it's a little bit ofa benefit that we waited so long
(00:22):
because there's some new things happening.
But, you know, I spendmore time on Closed Caption.
I don't know, more time.
Probably one of the most tediousand painful processes
that I spend a lot of effort on,
because I thinkit really matters.
And we're so excitedto have this guest on.
And she's going to tell uswhy it matters
how we can do a better job, and
some of the crazy trendsthat are happening out there
(00:44):
that we gotta watch out for.
So joining us all the wayfrom the Dallas Fort Worth area
she's Meryl Evans,she's the founder of Meryl.net
She's a speaker.
She does training.
She has a TED talk.
And I think she likes to say
she's your digital marketingleft hand gal
because she's a left handed person,not right handed person
which I think is pretty fun.
So Meryl welcome.
(01:05):
Great to see you.
Thank you Jeff, I'm excited to be here
and to connect with youwe’ve known each other for so long
So I'm glad it happenedwhen it happened
things happenin good time.
Exactly.
There's always a reason.
So before we jump into kind of best practices,
and I have so many questionsabout how to caption and
things I run intoall the time,
(01:26):
let's remind peoplewhy closed caption
It's great for people thatyou know, obviously can't hear.
You said you were born
with a ‘hearing free’ I think was you're great expression.
And some people are hard of hearing
which you see annotated HOH
but also sometimesyou just miss things
or, you know, evenjust like watching a movie,
the sound goes high or lowor this or that.
(01:48):
I find myself watching stuffwith closed caption all the time,
and you presented a bunch of statistics on your page of
the proliferation of people
watching video with the sound turned off,
which you could do if you got a closed caption track.
Yeah, exactly.
So I was born profoundly deaf,
and I got my first caption decoderwhen I was about 13 years old.
(02:12):
It's the way back then, before ADA which is the Americans with Disabilities Act
Which is anniversary 34th anniversary
I was gonna say, when did that pass?
When doesthe ADA pass?
1990
July 26, 1990.
Okay.
So I got my caption decoderbefore that happened.
(02:33):
And you had to hook it up to your TV just like a VCR or DVD player
and then you turned it on,
and there was the caption.
But back then, not many things were captioned.
Took a while for it to catch on.
I mean, I would just
I remember looking at their TV guide and looking for the caption symbol wherever
(02:54):
to find something,and then
when I went to get movies to watch,
I was always looking forthat symbol
because it was like spotting a unicorn
they were hard to find back there.
And now, Wow,it’s exploded.
People tell me all the timethey use caption,
I was in a show,‘Mary Poppins’ last week
(03:16):
and we captionedthree shows
and people wereraving about it
and none of these people were deaf.
So they just got the most benefit out of it
It helped them fill in gaps they missed
or maybe misunderstood an actor
so people just love captions
and not just for the deafand hard of hearing.
(03:37):
Right.
I'm curious how did you showcaptions during your show?
And just for peoplethat don't know,
you like to participate in musicals,so you where in Mary Poppins.
for the last month or so,hopefully that went well, but.
How did you show closecaptions in a live theater show?
So, we have an awesome human beingnamed Debbi Tank.
She is involvedwith the theater.
(03:59):
We have a deaf theater.
We have something called‘star catchers’
Which are peoplewith disabilities
mostly intellectual and developmentaldisabilities and autism
So they’ve always captioned those shows
and when I heard about the process
I was like, oh, my God,this sounds like a lot
And they do it free,so it is doable.
(04:21):
You just have to have
talented volunteersready to step up
So the waythey do it is
They use PowerPointand all the slides are black.
so it just shows up on
wherever it is as black
And
So every slide has
dialog or lyrics or whatever
(04:42):
and they just push the arrow key
to go to the next slidenext slide.
And if somebody adlibs
they can adjust as necessarygo up or down whatever.
So yeah.
It’s all done by hand
and its not going to be 100% accurate.
Because if there’s adlibbing
we can't change it.
But that's okay because it's based on the script
(05:06):
we worked off of.
So you’re getting the story
as somebody who attends musical theater
I'm getting a story.
I know what it's about,
so, and I knowit's not going to be perfect
because when you use regular human caption by typing
there’s always a delay
Right.
With these, there is no delay
(05:26):
So that’s where it has the upper hand
Yeah.
And we got a big TV screen
We put it off to the side
in front of the stage so the actors couldn’t use it.
And it was just for the audience.
Yeah, because sometimes the kids are tempted to look at it, so
Right.
But it turned out greatand it was just marvelous.
(05:48):
That's awesome.
So before we jump intosome of the details
and that's one of them, is the difficulty in live captioning
just a few more stats about,
you know, the benefitsand you know
the use case I always tell peoplewhen they don't understand.
And I’m like if you're standingin line at the grocery store
waiting and you want tocatch up on things,
you don't want to be a jerkand have your sound up.
So I think itit goes to this other thing
(06:10):
which you've talked about,which is
communicating in multiple fashions concurrently.
And I think I broke it downon my post on LinkedIn.
I have, you know, there'sobviously the audio,
there's the captions,you can see the people,
there's quotes, there's hashtags, you know,
there's all these different things.
And I think to your point,
(06:31):
everyone is going toreceive that differently.
Some people might like,
one mode of learning over another
or maybe they like auditoryor maybe they like the text.
And I think it's
a really important conceptto think of, of your consumers.
And how can you appealto as many ways that they
absorb information and learnconcurrently as possible?
(06:52):
And I think that's reallythe bigger theme here
and closed captions is areally important piece of that,
For sure.
So one of our posted videos on LinkedIn,
I always talk about what’s in the video,
a lot of people like to do teasers in their post.
And you basically have to watchthe video to know what it’s about.
(07:12):
Right,
The post won’t tell you and that's not a good thing,
because you're depriving people
who don't want to watchthe video, of the content.
So when you do both the post and the video,
you're giving people options inhow they consume your content.
Sometimes I see a five minute video, I'm like,
I don't have timefor five minutes,
(07:33):
but I can scan the post,
that kind of thing.
Or if they don’t have captions, I can scan the post
and not feel angry as I would
If they didn't haveanything at all.
Right
It's a compromise
for people who don't knowhow to do captions yet.
But captions are everywhere
(07:54):
and there’s almost no reason not to do it
because there’s so many waysyou can do it now.
Right, right
So when you have a post with the text,
you have the videoand you have the caption,
you are just reaching a much bigger audience
then you were if you used one of those
Right.
So just for clarity,so before ADA
(08:16):
were captions not requiredon regular television?
They are required on regular television
So that ADA appliesto network TV
Actually it’s not the ADA, it’s the communication act
CV ... I’m always forgetting the acronym,[CVAA - Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010]
but it's from the FCC [Federal Communications Commission]
(08:36):
and they require anything that aired on regular network TV.
Right.
Or cable TV must be captioned.
And that's why everything is captioned now
Right, right.
It's really interesting.
Okay, so let's jump into some of the rules because,
like I say, I ...
I spend so much timetrying to caption stuff
and it takes me so longand there's
(08:58):
and I have a bunch of questions,
but let's just jump into some of your rules.
First things first, colors
You suggest
actually, it's not even black.
It's slightly off black and slightly off white,
but just simplewhite on black.
No yellow, no orange,no green, no purple, no yellow.
(09:19):
So share a little bit abouthow we, you know,
how do we see and you know,the impact of contrast
and something simple likewhite on black or, you know,
almost white on black versuswhen you start to use colors.
For sure
I remember when I hadthe caption decoder
one dayI saw colors.
(09:40):
they were testing violet
they were testing yellow
and I was excited because it was a change.
But it quicklybecame a nuisance
It just interruptedthe viewing experience.
Now, you’ll never make 100% of the viewers happy
with yourcaption choices
Just, stop that
(10:03):
that's what the captioning 10 guidelines are
So it’s the best practices
to help you reach the biggest number of people possible
when they cannot control
the formattingof the captions.
Nowadays you can go on YouTube,you can go on Netflix,
(10:23):
you can go on Huluand customize the caption.
That is the number one wayto format captions
It’s the user preference
The user, letting them decide how they want the caption
I know people, a small percentagewho prefer yellow to white.
(10:43):
Whereas those of us who don’t like it
strongly dislike yellow.
It’s just an uncomfortablecolor for some people.
Right
Or if they have a disabilities that just makes it harder to tollerate.
Right.
And the reason I say off-black
off-white and off-black
is just thetake the edge off a little bit
(11:05):
Because sometimesthe black black
can be too muchfor some people
so it’s kind of a compromise.
Okay.
And it’s the strongest contrast
between the textand the background.
So that’s where you’ll havethe most success.
if you have to be in control of the color.
Okay.
We're going to jumpall over the place,
because that then begsthe question
(11:25):
as to thedifference between
closed captions and open captions.
And I think a lot of peoplemix those up.
I certainly do, but I use the expression burned captions
you know, burning it into the MP4
so you can't change it.
And I can chooseexactly what it looks like
versus closed captions,I guess, which is
where you have the SRT file
(11:46):
that then drives the YouTubeor whatever the choice
the choice selectorthing is. Right.
So how do you decidewhen to burn in your captions
and when not to burnin your captions?
Because,like you said,
you’re probably going to piss offsomebody with either choice.
Well, closed captions are always the best option and here’s why
(12:06):
So, I have my phone
If I'm watching it this way
It’s going to be really smallthe captions are going to be really small
But if I turn it sidewaysand it expands
the captions get bigger,with the screen
so that’s the advantage of closed caption,
they are adjustableand you can adjust them.
(12:27):
But with openor burned in caption
nothing changes.
You're stuck with that color choice
with that style.
Oh my goodness it looks mod
Too bad.
It doesn't matterhow you
even if you put iton a big screen
It’ll still be the same size as you burned it in.
It won't scale with the video?
(12:49):
It doesn't re-scale with the videoas the different size.
Right. Correct.
It does not look,
well.
The video
Think of the videolike a picture.
And you know how you can makea picture get bigger by.
But it loses quality,it become grainy
when you stretch a picturebigger than an actually is.
(13:11):
Right. Right.
So anyway, so closed captionis advantageous
and it let’s the viewer be in control.
[Jeff] Okay [Meryl] However
there are situations
like if you're using Instagram,TikTok, mobile,
basically mobile social networks,
it's very hard to do a caption fileand a caption video that way.
(13:32):
When I upload my videoto Instagram,
I use Instagram captioning tooland I use the mode.
You can actually make,
a lot of peopleprobably don't know this,
but you can make it bigger and you can control the colors a little bit
Right
And I can make them black and whiteand make them a little bigger.
So in that case,it's open caption.
(13:54):
Instagram does have a captioning option now
but I don't use it
because most of the peopleburn in their caption
and it was overlapping the
Instagram captions were overlapping the person’s video
and I gottired of it
and you can't turn it off
Yeah, I wish it would work like LinkedIn.
(14:16):
If you go to LinkedIn
there’s the caption button right there on the video
So, if somebody has open caption,
I can tap itand turn it off
and not haveboth showing.
But Instagram you have togo into your settings
to turn it off and then back out.
No, that’s too much.
So, that’sthe difference
(14:37):
you know, it depends on the circumstances.
Sometimes people don't knowwhat it means to have a second file
To have that SRT
Right
or VTT file
They don't know what that means
So open captioncould be easier for them.
Okay,
So the key is the captionin the first place
so that's step number one.
The rest
(14:57):
you can make progressas you get more experience.
Right. Okay.
Well let's stick on this topicbecause then the next thing is
backgroundsversus
putting like a, you know, on the outside edge of the letters. [Stroke]
or what I do evenis just put a full black frame.
So I'll oftenjust take the whole video
and scooch it up
(15:18):
to give myselfa nice black frame.
So I've got a consistent placefor those white letters,
to lay down
what I’ll, what then I'll try to do
is actually sync the SRTexactly to the burned in.
So when the SRT ones pop up,they actually exactly lay
over the top of the
of the I guess open would be the right,
(15:40):
the right word to say it.
I mean, is,is that a good best practice?
Because we often timespeople just don't leave enough,
you know, wiggle roomdown here.
And even on some of your little demo videos,
you know, the captions,
especially if you have graphicsand lower third
and their name and
this and thatyou know, you just lose space.
So I find like, scale it downand then create a frame
(16:02):
and then put the caption.
So it's got its own place.
It's not bothered.
There's no distractionbehind it.
And it's niceand clean and readable.
Well like Instagram and TikTok have other overlay stuff.
on their, you know,they have your user name
they have all the like buttons and you know, so
I have to put it uphigher than I normally would
(16:25):
on regular videobecause otherwise
it get’s in fight with the overlay
so that oneI have to move up
and that’s another advantage of closed caption by the way
So if you,
playing a video on YouTube
and you're playingwith the player,
the caption move up with the player
(16:48):
so those that don't seethe caption
even when you move it
and then when you move it away
it goes backto where it wants.
Oh, and get this
Did you knowyou can move the caption
in Zoom and in YouTubeand in other places
You can move it where?
You can move them.
Yeah,
You can take the captionright now on Zoom and
(17:08):
move it anywhere you want.
Oh within your settings?
If it's just a,if it's an SRT
Just drag. No.Just drag and drop
Oh it’s a drag and drop.
Yeah, justdrag and drop.
You can do thaton YouTube too
So, you can always play with it
and see if it works
it works in some places,not everywhere
but that would be really nice
(17:29):
if it was possible everywhere.
But I can't tell youhow many times
I watched something on Hulu.
Hulu is very strange
So for example
I’ll watch Law and Order SVUon NBC on my TV
The caption and the credit never overlap,
so you could see all the starring names
(17:50):
actor's name and the caption,
but on Hulu, they always overlap each other.
And I'm constantly having to
Yeah, if I want to see their names,
I have to pause, and yeah it’s a pain.
Right.
So I don't know what’s going onwith that, but it matters
we want to see bothplease don't hide these things
(18:11):
but they are ways around it
and that’s another advantage of open caption
you can control the placement of the credit
and the captionto ensure they don't overlap
because not everybody knowshow to move caption to
But really the best thing to do
Just put the credits somewhere else
and let the caption be where they are.
Right. Right
(18:32):
Okay so next.
So next question.
So I use Premierea lot and
So the question is,you know,
kind of how long in terms of duration
and number of wordsper text block.
And I lookedbefore we get on
the default on Adobe Premiere is 42 characters,
three seconds and no gapin between each block.
(18:54):
I think you said
you like 32 to 36 characters,something like that.
So two questions.
You know, how many wordsshould there be?
Or what's the is it,is it the duration?
Is it where people take breaksor speaker breaks?
you know, how do you figure out where to put the limits and the bounds
(19:15):
of a particular block?
Yeah, timing is tricky.
I didn't knowhow to do it
because I’ve worked in the caption to know
how long something is
should be up and not up.
It's like one second plus one quarter of a second per caption
at the shorter
(19:37):
In other words, no caption should be on for only one second
that’s too short
It needs to be slightly over one second on the short end
on the long end
think it was six seconds
I never remember
because I don't do numbers well,
but for the most partit’s 32 characters per line
(19:57):
64 for both lines together.
Oh, 32 per line.Okay
Yeah, but
to make things more complicated,
it can depend on some variables.
Because some networks.
streaming networksyou know
they format adifferentiating format
uses certain fonts that make it bigger or smaller.
(20:19):
So you know, it’s a lot of things.
So there’s no perfect number
Captioning Key
which is like the premier guide that
everybody depends on
they say 32
but Netflix
I believe they’ll do 42
and then Amazon is 40 or 30, I don’t remember
So they'renot consistent
(20:41):
But the key is
you don't want it to goall the way across
Because that turns it into a reading experience,
captions are meant to be scanned, not read
In other words you should be able to scan it quickly
You can watch the video,
but when you have it going all the way across
(21:02):
you’re just reading,
there’s so much text, you’re reading and your missing the video
right
So that's whylength is important
and I had
My workout had some caption up
for a really long time,like ten, 15 seconds.
And I was like,
I stopped doing whateverthe instructor said
(21:25):
because I didn’t realize the timing was off
because the caption went up too long
[Jeff] Right, right[Meryl] So, yeah
[Jeff] OK, so then [Meryl] So It matters, yeah.
So another question I had,which I think you just answered
was if I have,
let's just sayI have eight words.
Is it better to haveeight words in a line
or to stack at four wordsand four words?
(21:46):
And my assumption thatit's better to have it stacked,
because then your eye doesn'thave to move so much,
and it's more of a blob in the middleversus an extended line.
And it sounds like that isthat is true.
You want to keep itconcentrated in the middle
if you can, versushaving a long line.
Well, it depends, Ha!
Of course.
Everything is‘It depends’ right
or if it’s the word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
(22:09):
Sorry, Mary Poppinsin my head.
it depends because,
line breaking point or division, think
Captioning Key calls it line division
a lot of us saybreaking point.
And that's the veryend of the line.
You want to goto the next line
or the next caption,depending.
(22:29):
Right
It makes a difference.So for example
If my name is at the end of line one.
And my last manwith the beginning of line two
that’s not good.
Names, first and last name should stay together in one line.
So in other words,
I moved my first name to the second line with my last name
(22:49):
So for little thingslike that
and you don’t want to end the caption onsomething like the word ‘and'
it’s like
and ... what?
So it affects the cognitive
it become a cognitive overload.
Because you’re havingto hold that thought
waiting for the next one to pop in.
Don't forget, conversation happens quickly
(23:11):
so the brain’s got toprocess quickly
Right
So line division helpsease that cognitive overload
when you do thingsin the proper place
But that takes practice
and understanding the guideline,
even I sometimesI'm like
do my break here orbreak there?
So, it's just a lot of practice
(23:32):
But it’s just somethingto be aware of
and pay attention to,
because people like me
have depended on captionsfor many, many years.
We notice these little things
People who enjoy captions not because they depend on them
are less likely to catch these little things that make a difference.
Right
(23:52):
No, I think
I use page breaks a lot.
to be ableto drive emphasis,
and make sure that it endswhere it where it wants
and it picks up whereI want it to.
Because if I'm not using bold
and I'm not using yellow or green,
then that's a way that I can,
I can and that's why I like it.
I want to set it up to wherethe breaks are, where I want it.
(24:14):
I don't want it to follow somesome generic, some generic path.
Ok, so this is a big one.
and I know your rule,but it just kills me, so
I, I, I, I, I, I, I, stutter sometimes.
or I'll repeat myself,repeat myself,
or I find alot of people in,
a lot of people ininterviews will start a sentence
(24:35):
and then maybe change their mindand then kind of stop
and start a new sentence,
which is a great place to put,a break on the caption.
Your rules say that,you know,
you want to read and see in the caption,
All my I, I, I, I, I, I
but the question is, you know,
should it accurately reflect orshould it be easier for you to consume?
(24:57):
And I think I know your answer,
but it seemsa little counterintuitive
if, if it doesn't really addthat much value
or, you know, there's four I’s and I can take it down to two
you know it's a really soft, squishy,no easy answer problem
So how doyou address things like that.
Its a tricky one.
(25:18):
it's very hard to have ablack and white on that one
If it’s like a
If it’s like your video it’s a business video
and somebody says ‘um’ and ‘ah’ alot
I will not include thembecause it does detract.
from, you know, you'retrying to focus
and you’re seeing ums and ahs so muchthat you can’t make sense
(25:40):
I know somebody with Tourette’s
which is, they stutter they say certain words over and over
they may,they may, anyway they
I love how they captioned itthey skip
I can't rememberexactly how they did it, but
it just made it easier to follow.
I wish I could remember exactly what they did, but it was very clever.
(26:02):
However, professional TV like news and networks and TV shows
they need to have it because usually there’s a reason for it.
So if a characteris stumbling
They’re obviously nervous
or, it tells you something about their personality
and how they’re responding to a situation,
(26:25):
they’re nervousthey’re lying
You know, it can communicate a lot of things because we rely on text
Don't forget,we don't usually have sound cues.
So we may not hear thatnervousness in their voice
people like me don't
Right
So those words give you a hint
into thatperson’s personality or
(26:46):
current situation or feelings
But when it comes toyou know, just
You video, my videos, I leave it out.
Yeah.
Sometimes I might, like
I’ll shape my wordsa little bit.
I start to say somethingthen I change
I caption as much as I canreflecting that
(27:09):
and maybe putlike ellipses
like I’ll change my direction
it's one of thoseYou just have to go on your best
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Well it's, it's funny when you,
when you shift sentenceit's a great place to put a page break
because then suddenly that textdoesn't look so awkward
if you put that page breakand then the actual
(27:31):
the next caption is a nice sentence.
And then what's funny?
Thinking about professionals,
you know, hopefully most of them don't have a lot of crutch words.
You know, they've
they've worked itout of their system
if they're doingprofessional broadcasting.
So it is part of the character.
It is part of the script.
If they're, you know, doing something
versus justregular people,
and we all have our littlecrutch words and we,
(27:51):
We stumble, we're just not that good.
Okay. So that so that's good.
Okay, here's another, another one,
which is quiet and sounds
and different voices,
and you've got a whole video dedicated to,
you know, don't leave out the quiet.
There's stuff going on therethat you can communicate.
So how do you think about
(28:13):
communicating eithersilence, laughter?
you know, different thingsthat are not speech
or silence, I guess,or music.
I love music on the movies.
It tells you you're supposed tobe nervous, like ‘nervous music.’
With sound, it depends
if you see somebody laughing
I mean there’s just no.
They don't typically captionthat sound,
(28:35):
But if it’s coming at itfrom another room
they’ll put it in brackets [laughter] you know
and show that it’s comingfrom somewhere else
there’s lots of creative wayto deal with that.
That's why I got frustrated with ‘Stranger Things’
They caption every single sound on earth
in thein Season 4
(28:56):
it became the caption show
some peopledisagree with me.
Some deaf people disagree with meand that's okay.
Like I said
You're never going to get 100% agreement on caption.
But I felt like after every episode I was so tired
because I wasreading so much
and missing the action on the screen,
(29:17):
but they were captioning thingsthat were so quick
and not even important
and that you could see happening.
I remember this scene when
one of the kids was hiding
in a placea trailer
and he was making himself like SpaghettiOs
He opened the can cut that can open,
(29:37):
slopped the food into a bowland nuked it.
Well they captioned everything single one of those sounds.
I'm like, oh my God, that’s what I call overload
Too much.
I'm like it’s obvious.
And those sounds are not important.
So, he’s not in hiding where he has to be quiet
and he making all this noise plopping
(29:59):
And then you do want to note
when there’s a long period of silence
Otherwise westart wondering if
something is wrong with the caption?
Right.
That's what happened.
I remember there wasthe opening of a show
I can still see it in my mind,
and I'm watching it and I’m like
I can’t tell if there’s music or if there’s
(30:20):
I didn’t have my implant on
my bionic ear onand I’m like
Is the caption messed up? I mean it went on for a really long time
So that can be resolved easily
with a temporal note down
[Silence]
That kind of thing
so we do need to know when there is no sound
Otherwise we start wonderingif there’s problems.
(30:42):
It's funny, when I make posts with
when I don't have video,
if I'm making a post from a podcast
and I put closed caption against you know, a slide
I put, I put an audio waveform
just so that there's something to fill
in between when the captions are on and off,
so that you can see
(31:04):
there's, you know,it didn't pause,
it didn't stop.
You know, it didn'tit didn't freak out.
But do you know the expressionFoley, Foley effects.
Do you know Foley effects?
from making movies?
So basically, the Foley effects guy, is the guy that makes
[Jeff] the microwave door, Foley, yeah[Meryl] Oh, Foley, Foley, yes, F O L E Y, okay
Yeah, so maybe the director of thatother show must be a Foley guy.
(31:27):
So he just likes all those soundsand wants to make sure
they all get their proper credit.
That's hilarious.
yeah.
Well, I have seen those podcast clipsyou’re talking about,
the very short teaser clip.
And a lot of them for a while
I haven’t seen any lately thankfully
because I findthe waves distracting
(31:49):
I was having a hard time paying attention to the caption, when it kept
basically doing this to me
and I can't read the caption when it’s
constantly flutteringin my face.
So, it bothers me.
I can't speak for everybody,of course.
Right.
Yeah, I just find it distracting, but
I am not ADHD
(32:11):
or have certain disabilities that might be easily distracted by
something like that.
Or, they may benefit fromit because sometimes people
who have ADHD benefitfrom having the motion
so they can focus better because they need to have two things going on.
Right
I know because my whole family has it.
So I know how that goes sometimes.
(32:34):
Okay.
Another topic (32:34):
Identifying speakers.
So most of my videosare pretty simple.
It's talking head
and it's either a single shotor a double shot.
and so I, I
unless it's not obvious,
I try to keep the closed captionin the middle.
If we speak over one another,which happens,
then usually I'll put the name,
(32:56):
you know, Jeff said this and Meryl said this.
Is that theright way?
Do bounce itback and forth?
I think you often talkabout the tennis effect.
You don't like tennismatch spectating
in terms of the backand forth with your head.
Simply you can put the person’s name in brackets, that’s it.
Just [Meryl] in brackets
So if we’re both kind of taking
(33:16):
Like when I was saying ‘right, right’
When you were saying something
they can put both lines
Put your line and my line saying right with my name
Yours with your name [Jeff]
And that will keep it clear.
You're right.
Talking heads don'treally have a problem.
And talking heads with two peoplegenerally don't have a problem
(33:37):
because usually, whoever's speaking.
I mean if the person
If the other personis speaking
But the video on the onenot speaking
it’s obviously the other person speaking,and the other listening
so with two peoplethat’s pretty easy to figure out.
Okay
But there have been times when two peopleare in a conversation on a TV show
and you don't seetheir faces very well.
(33:59):
And you’re like
‘Wait, which one said that’because that was important
But it doesn't happen often.
But occasionally, though,just something important
and you really need to knowwho said what.
Right
So it's just very easy to fix
by adding the name in brackets.
and that’sall she wrote
Okay, so this is somethingI don't know if
(34:20):
it's not in any of your rulesthat I do,
which is actually give moreinformation in the closed caption
than is in the dialog.
So, for instance, if somebody says ADA[Americans with Disabilities Act]
and you know, you said ADA
I might caption that
if the duration works
and I can get the ADA[Americans with Disabilities Act]
at the end of the top line
underneath, I might say Americans with Disabilities Act.
(34:44):
I do that a lot with acronymsbecause a lot of people
will speak with the acronyms,and you never know
if the audience knowswhat those acronyms are.
So I'll often usethe second line
to punch in thethe real thing.
Or I’ve even
if somebody mentionsa piece of research
or something,
sometimes I'll use thatsecond line
(35:05):
to put likethe title of the research.
I mean, I'llhave it in the notes
in the webpage,
but it seems like,you know, a good opportunity
if someone's never heard of
the such and suchand such and such,
that if you've got space,you put it down there.
So now it doesn't match,
it doesn't match the dialog,
but it does addinteresting information that
and again, most of my stuff's on demand.
(35:26):
So you could pause it, read it
and then pick upthe conversation.
Have youdo you
Anyone do that?What do you think about that?
She's shaking her head.
Usually it, generally the rule is
what is said, what I heardshould be captioned
Okay,
Therefore, if it’s not said or heard it shouldn't be captioned
because you’readding more load, and
(35:48):
it’s not being said and plus
because it’s not said
The next thing, after ADA, is going to be said
and that adds more text
So in that case, I would just put it in the notes
or in the post itself
You know or in the commentsbecause that’s lots of opportunity
just want to stick to
(36:09):
But there has been an interesting thing
So there’s a show called ‘What’s My Line’
and they have a lot of punsbased on sounds
so one of the ones that sticks in my head
I don't know why
So, they were talking aboutsomeone who was a D.J.
and you know the world ‘Holler’ ‘Holler’
You know Holler, Holler
(36:30):
comes up.
Well, the girl with the DJ asked for a hint
So they made a joke that.
‘Challah’ as in challah the Jewish bread
you know the braided bread
It was a play on words
HollerChallah
So what they did was
The put challah ‘c h a l l a h’ in the caption
(36:54):
but next to it in parenthesis was ‘h o l r n’
which is what they were
and that was well done.
Because it was short
And to the point.
And it helpedclarify the pun because
some deaf people may not get the pun
because I've never heard the voice.
So I don't know what it sounds like.
(37:16):
Right
So that was clever and effective in that case.
And they do that on ‘Password’
The TV, the game show ‘Password’
Well, Jimmy Fallon has a tendency to
say things in a certain way
To try to give people hints
Like imitate an actor.
The caption will let us know
(37:36):
He's imitating
And one time, I have a video clip
He was imitatingthe ‘Minions’
You know,so little yellow
[Meryl] characters, yea[Jeff] little cartoon guys
And the captionsaid ‘Minions’
So I knew exactlywhat he was doing.
in saying that password
Yeah.
So he's doing itin the voice of the Minions.
(37:57):
So they're letting you know that he's
he’s actinglike the Minions.
[Jeff] That's funny[Meryl] Yeah
So, I don’t know is
maybe there's a future in adding more information
into this,into this thread.
That's interesting.
Okay.
So unfortunately, though,there's a new trend
that basically breaksevery single one
of Meryl’s rules,
and it's actually part of the catalyst
(38:18):
why I reached out to you to say,we have got to do this
sooner rather than later,because I'm seeing it.
I'm seeing it all over on YouTube shorts.
I'm seeing it on Instagram.
I don't really do TikTok, butI think it comes from TikTok.
And this thing, I
It even has a name.
It's called theHormozi captions
which is I guessnamed after this guy
I looked it upAlex Hormozi
And it's just like
(38:39):
everything the opposite of what's in your list.
It's one wordat a time.
It's colorful,it pops, it moves.
[Jeff] the fonts change[Meryl] It’s all caps
[Jeff] It’s all over the place[Meryl] It’s lower case, it keeps changing
What is going on.
And it justit feels like
and you're in the business,
that peopleare confusing
the purposeof the closed caption
(39:00):
to communicate information,which is what you always say.
Make it clear, make it concise,make it easy to read
or nothing else matters versus
this new graphic element
that they now can play with,
that they can.
They can just go crazyand throw these things
in all over the place.
And then the other onethat came up in your
in your rules,which is surprising to me
(39:21):
is just all caps,because there's no
there's no visibilityin seeing a word
versus reading a word
if it's in all caps.
So I wonder if you know,
What do you thinkwhen you see these Hormozi things
and all these artsy fartsy,
captions out there?
I put a video out there.
It’s a side by side video of theHormozi versus plain old boring captions
(39:45):
and the majority of people
could see whyHormozi was the problem.
A few peopleprefer the flashy stuff
but like I saidit was very small.
The majority do not
And it was distracting
is was harder to read
And all caps
another demo
A friend of mine’s friend did
(40:07):
So he wrote the word‘AIRPLANE’ in all caps
he drew a square,a rectangle around it
because that'sthe shape it makes
But when you put itin lower letters, lower case
he made a, he was ableto make a shape of an airplane.
So all caps have no visual
(40:28):
It’s the same, it’s either a square or a rectangle,
depending on how long the words are
Right
Whereas mixed case
or sentence case
has more visual difference
differentiation
and it makes it easier to read.
And yeah, so there are a tiny percentage of the people who do better
(40:51):
with all caps
But again, they are a tiny percentage.
That's why customizing captionis the best option.
And a lot of places offerall caps as an option.
Then there’s my favorite‘Karaoke Style’ caption
which is basicallythe word is highlighted
highlighted as it’s sung or spoken
(41:12):
that’s why I call it karaoke style
and it’s so distracting
my eyes start followingthe karaoke and
there’s not understood
does not get the idea of the message
Because it’s soIt’s playing follow the ball
and it’s not readingit’s not absorbing the information.
(41:34):
However, there are a tiny percentage of people
who benefit from that as well
and that is also an available optionin some streaming networks
where you can have each word highlighted
But when we're talking the majority
You’re neglecting that
And unfortunately Instagramthey've got like
(41:55):
five different variations of captions
you can choose from.
And the very first one
Changes size, is all caps
Is just, yeah...It’s like that
And I think people just go with itbecause that’s the default.
Right
So it’s like, they need to make the accessible one the default.
and people don’t change
(42:15):
Anyway, there’s a reason captions are boring
and have been boring all these years
it’s because they work.
They are not meant to be the show.
They are not meantto be the star.
The videoand the content of the video
is supposed to be the star
and this Hormozi stuffis taking away from that
(42:35):
If the companymaking the video
cannot make good content
they shouldn't be makingthe video at all
If they depend on theirHormozi captions to get eyeballs
to get people to payattention, then
their content could be better.
Right
That's what I think.
Right
Yeah, and it's like the whole video
(42:56):
it’s like a whole industrynow of how to make those things.
It's not not.
Oh my God.
Yeah, you canThere’s so many websites and apps
that add captionand they do the fancy stuff
And they’re givingpeople choices
and people don't know the best practices.
they don’t know these things they don’t look into it
(43:17):
And I'm not,
frustrated with them
I just know the
They don’t live with captions every day like I do
That's why I'm out thereeducating every day.
Because I can only reacha tiny percentage
of the world
through LinkedIn or where ever I’m posting
Well, hopefully we'll get a little bit more,
(43:38):
get you a little bit more reach after this.
But let's shiftgears a little bit
and talk about the change in technology
and how that'schanging everything.
Because you mentioned
when you were a little girl,you had some manual machine.
You had tohook up to the TV.
we've seen a lot of progress with itwithin AI and, you know,
we used to usea service like Rev.ai
(43:58):
And I used to joke, you know,they had a person generated closed caption
or you could buy the computergenerated closed caption.
And I think the price differencewas like ten x
and the computer generated one,this is years ago
was only about an 80% solution,and you almost spent
as much time fixing itas you would have had.
(44:19):
If you just tried to do it yourself.
The technology has comea long way.
I do my Adobe closed captionsnow right here on my laptop,
and it's again, it'snot 100% solution,
but it’s come so far.
How do you see,
you know, kind of the change in technology
in making it a little biteasier for people
to start to add this featureto their videos.
(44:41):
AI can't work by itself.It’s needs to have human intervention
because it is never 100% correct
and it also depends
on the sound quality,the video quality.
If we've gotboth got microphones
good chance it’ll be on the more accuratethan other one.
(45:01):
But of courseI have an accent, a
A deaf accent and
those apps are biased
against my accent even though
most people I meet understand me
and they understand most of what I say
not 100%
So you can say my words is like an automatic caption, they’re
(45:22):
so not completely perfectin my pronunciation
But that's okay. I,I know that, yeah,
I joke about it
Right.
I remember when I first tried Instagram auto captions
and it was so muchwork to fix it
they’ve gotten much better
I still have tofix it every time
but now it’s just a few thingsinstead of a lot
(45:43):
So it's a great starting point.
The key is to edit it
And they’ve saved you so much time editing
otherwise if you don't,
Just one word.
One letter can throw you offand you're confused.
I have a video screenshot of a
(46:03):
song on a Super Bowland one letter was wrong
and it was enough to through the whole lyric out.
I was like,It did not make sense at all
That’s how muchso
80% is not impressive
95% is not impressive
because you're missing
just enough words and letters
(46:23):
to not get the whole idea.
Yeah, well, if it makes you feel any better,
I had a run where I was interviewing
a bunch of peoplewith British accents,
and I think if I had set it upto just say British accent,
it would have worked fine.
But having an American accentand a British accent on the same interview
(46:44):
it just destroysthe auto-magic closed caption.
It just cannot deal with the,
I don’t know if it’s becausetheir expressions are slightly different
and they're
kind of emphasis on wordsand their accent on words
is different,but they struggled.
So don't, don't feel bad.
It's not just it's not just you
Yeah.
See, that’s another thing about automatic, AI
(47:08):
even if somebody was born
speaking English
if they have an accentthat’s British,
Australian, Canadianbut they were
they grew up that’s all they speak is English
It doesn’t work with their accent
I mean it worksbetter than mine,
but it's so different from American
standard basicAmerican accent
(47:30):
not something that’sreally heavy
You know, like, maybe
Boston, or
Right
Sorry, no offense Boston
I’m just trying to thinkof an example of
how, well sometimesthe southern draw
might be hard to tell.
yeah.
So AI is biased and then that
it expects perfect American Englishwith no emphasis
(47:54):
No heavy accent
in the way
Yeah,
Yeah,
So, shifting gearsa little bit, about with Covid
and what happenedwith, with, Covid.
So you gave your TED talkafter Covid.
So congratulationson your TED talk.
Thank you.
One of the themesthat comes up over and over,
whether it's the future of workor many, many things,
(48:17):
is that Covid was an accelerant
to things that were already underway.
And you talk about normalizingin your TED talk with your son,
you know, that it's normalizedto have text on screen.
For me, I think, you know,when the NFL did the draft
and Goodell wasin his basement,
you know, that kind of normalized video calls
and, you know, it made it.
(48:38):
If the NFL can do it
you know, then that then it's okay.
so Covid really changedI think
everyone's perceptionof closed captions,
everyone's acceptance of closed captions,
the perceived, value outsideof an ADA context.
So I wonder if you can speakabout how Covid has
has kind of changed people's receptionto your messaging.
(49:02):
Well like you said Jeff it
Covid accelerated the needto put captions out there because
Before Covid, Zoom, Microsoft Teams
they did not have captions
and after Covid
Like within four, five months, they had them.
But it was complicated.
on how to turn them on
(49:23):
In fact,
I still run into Zoom accounts that don't have captions turned on yet.
They don't know it
There’s one step every single Zoom account must do
one timeand one time only
then everythingit’ll always have captions.
But I still have
Two weeks ago I ran into an accountthat didn't have it turned on yet.
(49:46):
So that, that's whathappens when a product
is not born accessible.
If Zoom had built the product
with captions from the beginning,
it wouldn’t be this complicated,but that's another story.
So as we all went
to video calls all the time
people were finding they needed captions
(50:07):
not just the deaf andhard of hearing but others
and it was just a
a huge step toward normalizing accessibility
So I use captions as a great starting point
So when we all see it, and we run into it every day,
it becomes no big deal
Right
therefore, accessibility, all accessibility,
(50:30):
should be like that
We need to learn to accept there will always be ramps
in the right places.
Now ADA says that you have to have a ramp
if you have a building, right.
But it does not mean that you have to put it in the best place
And, it just saysyou have to have a ramp.
(50:50):
It doesn’t say howto make it a good experience
So for example, you have a restaurant
You put the ramp aroundthe back of the restaurant
but all your customers are coming in the front
Its not fair for that one customer who uses a wheelchair
to have to go around the back
That’s not a gooduser experience. So,
(51:11):
that's wasthat’s my whole,
Captions have definitely explodedbecause of the pandemic.
We’re seeing so, so many apps
I mean, my guide has a list of apps
the list keepsgetting longer.
And I'm like, I don't know, whysome company bother with it?
Because there’s too much competition now.
Yeah.
(51:32):
So
I hope that carries over to other accessibility things
Yeah, it's good news.I mean
I had Ryan Anderson on from MillerKnoll.
big design company, and theytalk about inclusive design.
So trying to think of the personwho needs the help first.
And if you designedwith them in mind,
(51:52):
generally there's benefitsto everybody else too.
you know, even as this closed caption thing,
as we've been talking about it
benefits a lot more than just people they can't hear.
There's all these kind of secondary benefits that maybe
people don't think about,or maybe not as obvious until they
till they get into ita little bit.
Yeah, that's why I always
(52:13):
So there’s a great cartoon.
A whole bunch of peopletrying to get into a building
and there is snow all over the ground
and the person shoveling is shoveling the snow off the steps.
And a person who uses a wheel chair says
Well, if you shovel the ramp first then we can all get in.
(52:33):
and the person says
when I'm finished with shoveling the stepsI’ll do the ramp
it's like, oh my God,
clear the rampbefore you clear the stairs
and you’ll get everybody in
[Jeff] That is really[Meryl] That simple
[Jeff] really [Meryl] universal design.
That's a good one.
So simple and,so simple and clear I love it.
(52:54):
All right.
Well, Meryl, we’regetting to the end of our time.
And I've really enjoyed it.
I got a few more questions,
but I want to give youthe last word,
to kind of encourage people.
What should they think aboutwhen they think about captions,
you know, what are thethe most common problems
that you see that people havethat they have to get over
so that they can have better captions,
on their media and get betterleverage on their media.
(53:18):
Well, there’s lot of things I see
But I will say, captions are not meant to be your brand.
They're not meantto represent your brand
In other words if your brand colors are orange and white
The captions are not going to be orange and white
if you want themto be accessible
In fact, orange and white.
are not accessible colors because the contrast is very small
(53:42):
So somebody who has trouble with that
is not going to be able to see your words at all
and if they have the sound off, that’s even worse
so stick with boring captions,
more people will get your message
more people will benefit
and you will get toexpand your reach
Great. Well thank you Meryl.
It's been a real treat.
(54:03):
And, if they needmore information,
they can go to Meryl.net there's all kinds of information
and side by sidecomparisons and,
statistics on the use of captions
for people that,that aren't hard of hearing or,
just a tonof wealth of information.
And what's the bestway for them to contact you?
they can go throughMeryl.net
or email me at
(54:24):
Me - M E at Meryl.netme@meryl.net
And you're on LinkedInand Twitter and all these other
[Jeff] platforms to right[Meryl] Oh yeah.
LinkedIn is goodyeah
All right. Well, Meryl,thanks again.
It's been a real treat.
And glad we were finally ableto get this together.
Yeah me to Jeff It was a real treat for me too.
All right.
(54:45):
She's Meryl,I'm Jeff.
You're watching ‘Turn the Lens’
Thanks for watching.We'll see you next time.
Thanks for listeningon the podcast. Take care.
Thank you.
That was great, Meryl.
That was good. I was very happy with it.
Well I am so excited for this.
I am so excited Meryl.
Me too Jeff I'm excited to.
All right so we will goin 3, 2, 1
Hey welcome backeverybody Jeff Frick here
coming to youfrom the home studio
for another episode of‘Turn the Lens’
And I've been trying to get this guest on for a while,
and maybe it's a little bit ofa benefit that we waited so long
(00:22):
because there's some new things happening.
But, you know, I spendmore time on Closed Caption.
I don't know, more time.
Probably one of the most tediousand painful processes
that I spend a lot of effort on,
because I thinkit really matters.
And we're so excitedto have this guest on.
And she's going to tell uswhy it matters
how we can do a better job, and
some of the crazy trendsthat are happening out there
(00:44):
that we gotta watch out for.
So joining us all the wayfrom the Dallas Fort Worth area
she's Meryl Evans,she's the founder of Meryl.net
She's a speaker.
She does training.
She has a TED talk.
And I think she likes to say
she's your digital marketingleft hand gal
because she's a left handed person,not right handed person
which I think is pretty fun.
So Meryl welcome.
(01:05):
Great to see you.
Thank you Jeff, I'm excited to be here
and to connect with youwe’ve known each other for so long
So I'm glad it happenedwhen it happened
things happenin good time.
Exactly.
There's always a reason.
So before we jump into kind of best practices,
and I have so many questionsabout how to caption and
things I run intoall the time,
(01:26):
let's remind peoplewhy closed caption
It's great for people thatyou know, obviously can't hear.
You said you were born
with a ‘hearing free’ I think was you're great expression.
And some people are hard of hearing
which you see annotated HOH
but also sometimesyou just miss things
or, you know, evenjust like watching a movie,
the sound goes high or lowor this or that.
(01:48):
I find myself watching stuffwith closed caption all the time,
and you presented a bunch of statistics on your page of
the proliferation of people
watching video with the sound turned off,
which you could do if you got a closed caption track.
Yeah, exactly.
So I was born profoundly deaf,
and I got my first caption decoderwhen I was about 13 years old.
(02:12):
It's the way back then, before ADA which is the Americans with Disabilities Act
Which is anniversary 34th anniversary
I was gonna say, when did that pass?
When doesthe ADA pass?
1990
July 26, 1990.
Okay.
So I got my caption decoderbefore that happened.
(02:33):
And you had to hook it up to your TV just like a VCR or DVD player
and then you turned it on,
and there was the caption.
But back then, not many things were captioned.
Took a while for it to catch on.
I mean, I would just
I remember looking at their TV guide and looking for the caption symbol wherever
(02:54):
to find something,and then
when I went to get movies to watch,
I was always looking forthat symbol
because it was like spotting a unicorn
they were hard to find back there.
And now, Wow,it’s exploded.
People tell me all the timethey use caption,
I was in a show,‘Mary Poppins’ last week
(03:16):
and we captionedthree shows
and people wereraving about it
and none of these people were deaf.
So they just got the most benefit out of it
It helped them fill in gaps they missed
or maybe misunderstood an actor
so people just love captions
and not just for the deafand hard of hearing.
(03:37):
Right.
I'm curious how did you showcaptions during your show?
And just for peoplethat don't know,
you like to participate in musicals,so you where in Mary Poppins.
for the last month or so,hopefully that went well, but.
How did you show closecaptions in a live theater show?
So, we have an awesome human beingnamed Debbi Tank.
She is involvedwith the theater.
(03:59):
We have a deaf theater.
We have something called‘star catchers’
Which are peoplewith disabilities
mostly intellectual and developmentaldisabilities and autism
So they’ve always captioned those shows
and when I heard about the process
I was like, oh, my God,this sounds like a lot
And they do it free,so it is doable.
(04:21):
You just have to have
talented volunteersready to step up
So the waythey do it is
They use PowerPointand all the slides are black.
so it just shows up on
wherever it is as black
And
So every slide has
dialog or lyrics or whatever
(04:42):
and they just push the arrow key
to go to the next slidenext slide.
And if somebody adlibs
they can adjust as necessarygo up or down whatever.
So yeah.
It’s all done by hand
and its not going to be 100% accurate.
Because if there’s adlibbing
we can't change it.
But that's okay because it's based on the script
(05:06):
we worked off of.
So you’re getting the story
as somebody who attends musical theater
I'm getting a story.
I know what it's about,
so, and I knowit's not going to be perfect
because when you use regular human caption by typing
there’s always a delay
Right.
With these, there is no delay
(05:26):
So that’s where it has the upper hand
Yeah.
And we got a big TV screen
We put it off to the side
in front of the stage so the actors couldn’t use it.
And it was just for the audience.
Yeah, because sometimes the kids are tempted to look at it, so
Right.
But it turned out greatand it was just marvelous.
(05:48):
That's awesome.
So before we jump intosome of the details
and that's one of them, is the difficulty in live captioning
just a few more stats about,
you know, the benefitsand you know
the use case I always tell peoplewhen they don't understand.
And I’m like if you're standingin line at the grocery store
waiting and you want tocatch up on things,
you don't want to be a jerkand have your sound up.
So I think itit goes to this other thing
(06:10):
which you've talked about,which is
communicating in multiple fashions concurrently.
And I think I broke it downon my post on LinkedIn.
I have, you know, there'sobviously the audio,
there's the captions,you can see the people,
there's quotes, there's hashtags, you know,
there's all these different things.
And I think to your point,
(06:31):
everyone is going toreceive that differently.
Some people might like,
one mode of learning over another
or maybe they like auditoryor maybe they like the text.
And I think it's
a really important conceptto think of, of your consumers.
And how can you appealto as many ways that they
absorb information and learnconcurrently as possible?
(06:52):
And I think that's reallythe bigger theme here
and closed captions is areally important piece of that,
For sure.
So one of our posted videos on LinkedIn,
I always talk about what’s in the video,
a lot of people like to do teasers in their post.
And you basically have to watchthe video to know what it’s about.
(07:12):
Right,
The post won’t tell you and that's not a good thing,
because you're depriving people
who don't want to watchthe video, of the content.
So when you do both the post and the video,
you're giving people options inhow they consume your content.
Sometimes I see a five minute video, I'm like,
I don't have timefor five minutes,
(07:33):
but I can scan the post,
that kind of thing.
Or if they don’t have captions, I can scan the post
and not feel angry as I would
If they didn't haveanything at all.
Right
It's a compromise
for people who don't knowhow to do captions yet.
But captions are everywhere
(07:54):
and there’s almost no reason not to do it
because there’s so many waysyou can do it now.
Right, right
So when you have a post with the text,
you have the videoand you have the caption,
you are just reaching a much bigger audience
then you were if you used one of those
Right.
So just for clarity,so before ADA
(08:16):
were captions not requiredon regular television?
They are required on regular television
So that ADA appliesto network TV
Actually it’s not the ADA, it’s the communication act
CV ... I’m always forgetting the acronym,[CVAA - Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010]
but it's from the FCC [Federal Communications Commission]
(08:36):
and they require anything that aired on regular network TV.
Right.
Or cable TV must be captioned.
And that's why everything is captioned now
Right, right.
It's really interesting.
Okay, so let's jump into some of the rules because,
like I say, I ...
I spend so much timetrying to caption stuff
and it takes me so longand there's
(08:58):
and I have a bunch of questions,
but let's just jump into some of your rules.
First things first, colors
You suggest
actually, it's not even black.
It's slightly off black and slightly off white,
but just simplewhite on black.
No yellow, no orange,no green, no purple, no yellow.
(09:19):
So share a little bit abouthow we, you know,
how do we see and you know,the impact of contrast
and something simple likewhite on black or, you know,
almost white on black versuswhen you start to use colors.
For sure
I remember when I hadthe caption decoder
one dayI saw colors.
(09:40):
they were testing violet
they were testing yellow
and I was excited because it was a change.
But it quicklybecame a nuisance
It just interruptedthe viewing experience.
Now, you’ll never make 100% of the viewers happy
with yourcaption choices
Just, stop that
(10:03):
that's what the captioning 10 guidelines are
So it’s the best practices
to help you reach the biggest number of people possible
when they cannot control
the formattingof the captions.
Nowadays you can go on YouTube,you can go on Netflix,
(10:23):
you can go on Huluand customize the caption.
That is the number one wayto format captions
It’s the user preference
The user, letting them decide how they want the caption
I know people, a small percentagewho prefer yellow to white.
(10:43):
Whereas those of us who don’t like it
strongly dislike yellow.
It’s just an uncomfortablecolor for some people.
Right
Or if they have a disabilities that just makes it harder to tollerate.
Right.
And the reason I say off-black
off-white and off-black
is just thetake the edge off a little bit
(11:05):
Because sometimesthe black black
can be too muchfor some people
so it’s kind of a compromise.
Okay.
And it’s the strongest contrast
between the textand the background.
So that’s where you’ll havethe most success.
if you have to be in control of the color.
Okay.
We're going to jumpall over the place,
because that then begsthe question
(11:25):
as to thedifference between
closed captions and open captions.
And I think a lot of peoplemix those up.
I certainly do, but I use the expression burned captions
you know, burning it into the MP4
so you can't change it.
And I can chooseexactly what it looks like
versus closed captions,I guess, which is
where you have the SRT file
(11:46):
that then drives the YouTubeor whatever the choice
the choice selectorthing is. Right.
So how do you decidewhen to burn in your captions
and when not to burnin your captions?
Because,like you said,
you’re probably going to piss offsomebody with either choice.
Well, closed captions are always the best option and here’s why
(12:06):
So, I have my phone
If I'm watching it this way
It’s going to be really smallthe captions are going to be really small
But if I turn it sidewaysand it expands
the captions get bigger,with the screen
so that’s the advantage of closed caption,
they are adjustableand you can adjust them.
(12:27):
But with openor burned in caption
nothing changes.
You're stuck with that color choice
with that style.
Oh my goodness it looks mod
Too bad.
It doesn't matterhow you
even if you put iton a big screen
It’ll still be the same size as you burned it in.
It won't scale with the video?
(12:49):
It doesn't re-scale with the videoas the different size.
Right. Correct.
It does not look,
well.
The video
Think of the videolike a picture.
And you know how you can makea picture get bigger by.
But it loses quality,it become grainy
when you stretch a picturebigger than an actually is.
(13:11):
Right. Right.
So anyway, so closed captionis advantageous
and it let’s the viewer be in control.
[Jeff] Okay [Meryl] However
there are situations
like if you're using Instagram,TikTok, mobile,
basically mobile social networks,
it's very hard to do a caption fileand a caption video that way.
(13:32):
When I upload my videoto Instagram,
I use Instagram captioning tooland I use the mode.
You can actually make,
a lot of peopleprobably don't know this,
but you can make it bigger and you can control the colors a little bit
Right
And I can make them black and whiteand make them a little bigger.
So in that case,it's open caption.
(13:54):
Instagram does have a captioning option now
but I don't use it
because most of the peopleburn in their caption
and it was overlapping the
Instagram captions were overlapping the person’s video
and I gottired of it
and you can't turn it off
Yeah, I wish it would work like LinkedIn.
(14:16):
If you go to LinkedIn
there’s the caption button right there on the video
So, if somebody has open caption,
I can tap itand turn it off
and not haveboth showing.
But Instagram you have togo into your settings
to turn it off and then back out.
No, that’s too much.
So, that’sthe difference
(14:37):
you know, it depends on the circumstances.
Sometimes people don't knowwhat it means to have a second file
To have that SRT
Right
or VTT file
They don't know what that means
So open captioncould be easier for them.
Okay,
So the key is the captionin the first place
so that's step number one.
The rest
(14:57):
you can make progressas you get more experience.
Right. Okay.
Well let's stick on this topicbecause then the next thing is
backgroundsversus
putting like a, you know, on the outside edge of the letters. [Stroke]
or what I do evenis just put a full black frame.
So I'll oftenjust take the whole video
and scooch it up
(15:18):
to give myselfa nice black frame.
So I've got a consistent placefor those white letters,
to lay down
what I’ll, what then I'll try to do
is actually sync the SRTexactly to the burned in.
So when the SRT ones pop up,they actually exactly lay
over the top of the
of the I guess open would be the right,
(15:40):
the right word to say it.
I mean, is,is that a good best practice?
Because we often timespeople just don't leave enough,
you know, wiggle roomdown here.
And even on some of your little demo videos,
you know, the captions,
especially if you have graphicsand lower third
and their name and
this and thatyou know, you just lose space.
So I find like, scale it downand then create a frame
(16:02):
and then put the caption.
So it's got its own place.
It's not bothered.
There's no distractionbehind it.
And it's niceand clean and readable.
Well like Instagram and TikTok have other overlay stuff.
on their, you know,they have your user name
they have all the like buttons and you know, so
I have to put it uphigher than I normally would
(16:25):
on regular videobecause otherwise
it get’s in fight with the overlay
so that oneI have to move up
and that’s another advantage of closed caption by the way
So if you,
playing a video on YouTube
and you're playingwith the player,
the caption move up with the player
(16:48):
so those that don't seethe caption
even when you move it
and then when you move it away
it goes backto where it wants.
Oh, and get this
Did you knowyou can move the caption
in Zoom and in YouTubeand in other places
You can move it where?
You can move them.
Yeah,
You can take the captionright now on Zoom and
(17:08):
move it anywhere you want.
Oh within your settings?
If it's just a,if it's an SRT
Just drag. No.Just drag and drop
Oh it’s a drag and drop.
Yeah, justdrag and drop.
You can do thaton YouTube too
So, you can always play with it
and see if it works
it works in some places,not everywhere
but that would be really nice
(17:29):
if it was possible everywhere.
But I can't tell youhow many times
I watched something on Hulu.
Hulu is very strange
So for example
I’ll watch Law and Order SVUon NBC on my TV
The caption and the credit never overlap,
so you could see all the starring names
(17:50):
actor's name and the caption,
but on Hulu, they always overlap each other.
And I'm constantly having to
Yeah, if I want to see their names,
I have to pause, and yeah it’s a pain.
Right.
So I don't know what’s going onwith that, but it matters
we want to see bothplease don't hide these things
(18:11):
but they are ways around it
and that’s another advantage of open caption
you can control the placement of the credit
and the captionto ensure they don't overlap
because not everybody knowshow to move caption to
But really the best thing to do
Just put the credits somewhere else
and let the caption be where they are.
Right. Right
(18:32):
Okay so next.
So next question.
So I use Premierea lot and
So the question is,you know,
kind of how long in terms of duration
and number of wordsper text block.
And I lookedbefore we get on
the default on Adobe Premiere is 42 characters,
three seconds and no gapin between each block.
(18:54):
I think you said
you like 32 to 36 characters,something like that.
So two questions.
You know, how many wordsshould there be?
Or what's the is it,is it the duration?
Is it where people take breaksor speaker breaks?
you know, how do you figure out where to put the limits and the bounds
(19:15):
of a particular block?
Yeah, timing is tricky.
I didn't knowhow to do it
because I’ve worked in the caption to know
how long something is
should be up and not up.
It's like one second plus one quarter of a second per caption
at the shorter
(19:37):
In other words, no caption should be on for only one second
that’s too short
It needs to be slightly over one second on the short end
on the long end
think it was six seconds
I never remember
because I don't do numbers well,
but for the most partit’s 32 characters per line
(19:57):
64 for both lines together.
Oh, 32 per line.Okay
Yeah, but
to make things more complicated,
it can depend on some variables.
Because some networks.
streaming networksyou know
they format adifferentiating format
uses certain fonts that make it bigger or smaller.
(20:19):
So you know, it’s a lot of things.
So there’s no perfect number
Captioning Key
which is like the premier guide that
everybody depends on
they say 32
but Netflix
I believe they’ll do 42
and then Amazon is 40 or 30, I don’t remember
So they'renot consistent
(20:41):
But the key is
you don't want it to goall the way across
Because that turns it into a reading experience,
captions are meant to be scanned, not read
In other words you should be able to scan it quickly
You can watch the video,
but when you have it going all the way across
(21:02):
you’re just reading,
there’s so much text, you’re reading and your missing the video
right
So that's whylength is important
and I had
My workout had some caption up
for a really long time,like ten, 15 seconds.
And I was like,
I stopped doing whateverthe instructor said
(21:25):
because I didn’t realize the timing was off
because the caption went up too long
[Jeff] Right, right[Meryl] So, yeah
[Jeff] OK, so then [Meryl] So It matters, yeah.
So another question I had,which I think you just answered
was if I have,
let's just sayI have eight words.
Is it better to haveeight words in a line
or to stack at four wordsand four words?
(21:46):
And my assumption thatit's better to have it stacked,
because then your eye doesn'thave to move so much,
and it's more of a blob in the middleversus an extended line.
And it sounds like that isthat is true.
You want to keep itconcentrated in the middle
if you can, versushaving a long line.
Well, it depends, Ha!
Of course.
Everything is‘It depends’ right
or if it’s the word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
(22:09):
Sorry, Mary Poppinsin my head.
it depends because,
line breaking point or division, think
Captioning Key calls it line division
a lot of us saybreaking point.
And that's the veryend of the line.
You want to goto the next line
or the next caption,depending.
(22:29):
Right
It makes a difference.So for example
If my name is at the end of line one.
And my last manwith the beginning of line two
that’s not good.
Names, first and last name should stay together in one line.
So in other words,
I moved my first name to the second line with my last name
(22:49):
So for little thingslike that
and you don’t want to end the caption onsomething like the word ‘and'
it’s like
and ... what?
So it affects the cognitive
it become a cognitive overload.
Because you’re havingto hold that thought
waiting for the next one to pop in.
Don't forget, conversation happens quickly
(23:11):
so the brain’s got toprocess quickly
Right
So line division helpsease that cognitive overload
when you do thingsin the proper place
But that takes practice
and understanding the guideline,
even I sometimesI'm like
do my break here orbreak there?
So, it's just a lot of practice
(23:32):
But it’s just somethingto be aware of
and pay attention to,
because people like me
have depended on captionsfor many, many years.
We notice these little things
People who enjoy captions not because they depend on them
are less likely to catch these little things that make a difference.
Right
(23:52):
No, I think
I use page breaks a lot.
to be ableto drive emphasis,
and make sure that it endswhere it where it wants
and it picks up whereI want it to.
Because if I'm not using bold
and I'm not using yellow or green,
then that's a way that I can,
I can and that's why I like it.
I want to set it up to wherethe breaks are, where I want it.
(24:14):
I don't want it to follow somesome generic, some generic path.
Ok, so this is a big one.
and I know your rule,but it just kills me, so
I, I, I, I, I, I, I, stutter sometimes.
or I'll repeat myself,repeat myself,
or I find alot of people in,
a lot of people ininterviews will start a sentence
(24:35):
and then maybe change their mindand then kind of stop
and start a new sentence,
which is a great place to put,a break on the caption.
Your rules say that,you know,
you want to read and see in the caption,
All my I, I, I, I, I, I
but the question is, you know,
should it accurately reflect orshould it be easier for you to consume?
(24:57):
And I think I know your answer,
but it seemsa little counterintuitive
if, if it doesn't really addthat much value
or, you know, there's four I’s and I can take it down to two
you know it's a really soft, squishy,no easy answer problem
So how doyou address things like that.
Its a tricky one.
(25:18):
it's very hard to have ablack and white on that one
If it’s like a
If it’s like your video it’s a business video
and somebody says ‘um’ and ‘ah’ alot
I will not include thembecause it does detract.
from, you know, you'retrying to focus
and you’re seeing ums and ahs so muchthat you can’t make sense
(25:40):
I know somebody with Tourette’s
which is, they stutter they say certain words over and over
they may,they may, anyway they
I love how they captioned itthey skip
I can't rememberexactly how they did it, but
it just made it easier to follow.
I wish I could remember exactly what they did, but it was very clever.
(26:02):
However, professional TV like news and networks and TV shows
they need to have it because usually there’s a reason for it.
So if a characteris stumbling
They’re obviously nervous
or, it tells you something about their personality
and how they’re responding to a situation,
(26:25):
they’re nervousthey’re lying
You know, it can communicate a lot of things because we rely on text
Don't forget,we don't usually have sound cues.
So we may not hear thatnervousness in their voice
people like me don't
Right
So those words give you a hint
into thatperson’s personality or
(26:46):
current situation or feelings
But when it comes toyou know, just
You video, my videos, I leave it out.
Yeah.
Sometimes I might, like
I’ll shape my wordsa little bit.
I start to say somethingthen I change
I caption as much as I canreflecting that
(27:09):
and maybe putlike ellipses
like I’ll change my direction
it's one of thoseYou just have to go on your best
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Well it's, it's funny when you,
when you shift sentenceit's a great place to put a page break
because then suddenly that textdoesn't look so awkward
if you put that page breakand then the actual
(27:31):
the next caption is a nice sentence.
And then what's funny?
Thinking about professionals,
you know, hopefully most of them don't have a lot of crutch words.
You know, they've
they've worked itout of their system
if they're doingprofessional broadcasting.
So it is part of the character.
It is part of the script.
If they're, you know, doing something
versus justregular people,
and we all have our littlecrutch words and we,
(27:51):
We stumble, we're just not that good.
Okay. So that so that's good.
Okay, here's another, another one,
which is quiet and sounds
and different voices,
and you've got a whole video dedicated to,
you know, don't leave out the quiet.
There's stuff going on therethat you can communicate.
So how do you think about
(28:13):
communicating eithersilence, laughter?
you know, different thingsthat are not speech
or silence, I guess,or music.
I love music on the movies.
It tells you you're supposed tobe nervous, like ‘nervous music.’
With sound, it depends
if you see somebody laughing
I mean there’s just no.
They don't typically captionthat sound,
(28:35):
But if it’s coming at itfrom another room
they’ll put it in brackets [laughter] you know
and show that it’s comingfrom somewhere else
there’s lots of creative wayto deal with that.
That's why I got frustrated with ‘Stranger Things’
They caption every single sound on earth
in thein Season 4
(28:56):
it became the caption show
some peopledisagree with me.
Some deaf people disagree with meand that's okay.
Like I said
You're never going to get 100% agreement on caption.
But I felt like after every episode I was so tired
because I wasreading so much
and missing the action on the screen,
(29:17):
but they were captioning thingsthat were so quick
and not even important
and that you could see happening.
I remember this scene when
one of the kids was hiding
in a placea trailer
and he was making himself like SpaghettiOs
He opened the can cut that can open,
(29:37):
slopped the food into a bowland nuked it.
Well they captioned everything single one of those sounds.
I'm like, oh my God, that’s what I call overload
Too much.
I'm like it’s obvious.
And those sounds are not important.
So, he’s not in hiding where he has to be quiet
and he making all this noise plopping
(29:59):
And then you do want to note
when there’s a long period of silence
Otherwise westart wondering if
something is wrong with the caption?
Right.
That's what happened.
I remember there wasthe opening of a show
I can still see it in my mind,
and I'm watching it and I’m like
I can’t tell if there’s music or if there’s
(30:20):
I didn’t have my implant on
my bionic ear onand I’m like
Is the caption messed up? I mean it went on for a really long time
So that can be resolved easily
with a temporal note down
[Silence]
That kind of thing
so we do need to know when there is no sound
Otherwise we start wonderingif there’s problems.
(30:42):
It's funny, when I make posts with
when I don't have video,
if I'm making a post from a podcast
and I put closed caption against you know, a slide
I put, I put an audio waveform
just so that there's something to fill
in between when the captions are on and off,
so that you can see
(31:04):
there's, you know,it didn't pause,
it didn't stop.
You know, it didn'tit didn't freak out.
But do you know the expressionFoley, Foley effects.
Do you know Foley effects?
from making movies?
So basically, the Foley effects guy, is the guy that makes
[Jeff] the microwave door, Foley, yeah[Meryl] Oh, Foley, Foley, yes, F O L E Y, okay
Yeah, so maybe the director of thatother show must be a Foley guy.
(31:27):
So he just likes all those soundsand wants to make sure
they all get their proper credit.
That's hilarious.
yeah.
Well, I have seen those podcast clipsyou’re talking about,
the very short teaser clip.
And a lot of them for a while
I haven’t seen any lately thankfully
because I findthe waves distracting
(31:49):
I was having a hard time paying attention to the caption, when it kept
basically doing this to me
and I can't read the caption when it’s
constantly flutteringin my face.
So, it bothers me.
I can't speak for everybody,of course.
Right.
Yeah, I just find it distracting, but
I am not ADHD
(32:11):
or have certain disabilities that might be easily distracted by
something like that.
Or, they may benefit fromit because sometimes people
who have ADHD benefitfrom having the motion
so they can focus better because they need to have two things going on.
Right
I know because my whole family has it.
So I know how that goes sometimes.
(32:34):
Okay.
Another topic (32:34):
Identifying speakers.
So most of my videosare pretty simple.
It's talking head
and it's either a single shotor a double shot.
and so I, I
unless it's not obvious,
I try to keep the closed captionin the middle.
If we speak over one another,which happens,
then usually I'll put the name,
(32:56):
you know, Jeff said this and Meryl said this.
Is that theright way?
Do bounce itback and forth?
I think you often talkabout the tennis effect.
You don't like tennismatch spectating
in terms of the backand forth with your head.
Simply you can put the person’s name in brackets, that’s it.
Just [Meryl] in brackets
So if we’re both kind of taking
(33:16):
Like when I was saying ‘right, right’
When you were saying something
they can put both lines
Put your line and my line saying right with my name
Yours with your name [Jeff]
And that will keep it clear.
You're right.
Talking heads don'treally have a problem.
And talking heads with two peoplegenerally don't have a problem
(33:37):
because usually, whoever's speaking.
I mean if the person
If the other personis speaking
But the video on the onenot speaking
it’s obviously the other person speaking,and the other listening
so with two peoplethat’s pretty easy to figure out.
Okay
But there have been times when two peopleare in a conversation on a TV show
and you don't seetheir faces very well.
(33:59):
And you’re like
‘Wait, which one said that’because that was important
But it doesn't happen often.
But occasionally, though,just something important
and you really need to knowwho said what.
Right
So it's just very easy to fix
by adding the name in brackets.
and that’sall she wrote
Okay, so this is somethingI don't know if
(34:20):
it's not in any of your rulesthat I do,
which is actually give moreinformation in the closed caption
than is in the dialog.
So, for instance, if somebody says ADA[Americans with Disabilities Act]
and you know, you said ADA
I might caption that
if the duration works
and I can get the ADA[Americans with Disabilities Act]
at the end of the top line
underneath, I might say Americans with Disabilities Act.
(34:44):
I do that a lot with acronymsbecause a lot of people
will speak with the acronyms,and you never know
if the audience knowswhat those acronyms are.
So I'll often usethe second line
to punch in thethe real thing.
Or I’ve even
if somebody mentionsa piece of research
or something,
sometimes I'll use thatsecond line
(35:05):
to put likethe title of the research.
I mean, I'llhave it in the notes
in the webpage,
but it seems like,you know, a good opportunity
if someone's never heard of
the such and suchand such and such,
that if you've got space,you put it down there.
So now it doesn't match,
it doesn't match the dialog,
but it does addinteresting information that
and again, most of my stuff's on demand.
(35:26):
So you could pause it, read it
and then pick upthe conversation.
Have youdo you
Anyone do that?What do you think about that?
She's shaking her head.
Usually it, generally the rule is
what is said, what I heardshould be captioned
Okay,
Therefore, if it’s not said or heard it shouldn't be captioned
because you’readding more load, and
(35:48):
it’s not being said and plus
because it’s not said
The next thing, after ADA, is going to be said
and that adds more text
So in that case, I would just put it in the notes
or in the post itself
You know or in the commentsbecause that’s lots of opportunity
just want to stick to
(36:09):
But there has been an interesting thing
So there’s a show called ‘What’s My Line’
and they have a lot of punsbased on sounds
so one of the ones that sticks in my head
I don't know why
So, they were talking aboutsomeone who was a D.J.
and you know the world ‘Holler’ ‘Holler’
You know Holler, Holler
(36:30):
comes up.
Well, the girl with the DJ asked for a hint
So they made a joke that.
‘Challah’ as in challah the Jewish bread
you know the braided bread
It was a play on words
HollerChallah
So what they did was
The put challah ‘c h a l l a h’ in the caption
(36:54):
but next to it in parenthesis was ‘h o l r n’
which is what they were
and that was well done.
Because it was short
And to the point.
And it helpedclarify the pun because
some deaf people may not get the pun
because I've never heard the voice.
So I don't know what it sounds like.
(37:16):
Right
So that was clever and effective in that case.
And they do that on ‘Password’
The TV, the game show ‘Password’
Well, Jimmy Fallon has a tendency to
say things in a certain way
To try to give people hints
Like imitate an actor.
The caption will let us know
(37:36):
He's imitating
And one time, I have a video clip
He was imitatingthe ‘Minions’
You know,so little yellow
[Meryl] characters, yea[Jeff] little cartoon guys
And the captionsaid ‘Minions’
So I knew exactlywhat he was doing.
in saying that password
Yeah.
So he's doing itin the voice of the Minions.
(37:57):
So they're letting you know that he's
he’s actinglike the Minions.
[Jeff] That's funny[Meryl] Yeah
So, I don’t know is
maybe there's a future in adding more information
into this,into this thread.
That's interesting.
Okay.
So unfortunately, though,there's a new trend
that basically breaksevery single one
of Meryl’s rules,
and it's actually part of the catalyst
(38:18):
why I reached out to you to say,we have got to do this
sooner rather than later,because I'm seeing it.
I'm seeing it all over on YouTube shorts.
I'm seeing it on Instagram.
I don't really do TikTok, butI think it comes from TikTok.
And this thing, I
It even has a name.
It's called theHormozi captions
which is I guessnamed after this guy
I looked it upAlex Hormozi
And it's just like
(38:39):
everything the opposite of what's in your list.
It's one wordat a time.
It's colorful,it pops, it moves.
[Jeff] the fonts change[Meryl] It’s all caps
[Jeff] It’s all over the place[Meryl] It’s lower case, it keeps changing
What is going on.
And it justit feels like
and you're in the business,
that peopleare confusing
the purposeof the closed caption
(39:00):
to communicate information,which is what you always say.
Make it clear, make it concise,make it easy to read
or nothing else matters versus
this new graphic element
that they now can play with,
that they can.
They can just go crazyand throw these things
in all over the place.
And then the other onethat came up in your
in your rules,which is surprising to me
(39:21):
is just all caps,because there's no
there's no visibilityin seeing a word
versus reading a word
if it's in all caps.
So I wonder if you know,
What do you thinkwhen you see these Hormozi things
and all these artsy fartsy,
captions out there?
I put a video out there.
It’s a side by side video of theHormozi versus plain old boring captions
(39:45):
and the majority of people
could see whyHormozi was the problem.
A few peopleprefer the flashy stuff
but like I saidit was very small.
The majority do not
And it was distracting
is was harder to read
And all caps
another demo
A friend of mine’s friend did
(40:07):
So he wrote the word‘AIRPLANE’ in all caps
he drew a square,a rectangle around it
because that'sthe shape it makes
But when you put itin lower letters, lower case
he made a, he was ableto make a shape of an airplane.
So all caps have no visual
(40:28):
It’s the same, it’s either a square or a rectangle,
depending on how long the words are
Right
Whereas mixed case
or sentence case
has more visual difference
differentiation
and it makes it easier to read.
And yeah, so there are a tiny percentage of the people who do better
(40:51):
with all caps
But again, they are a tiny percentage.
That's why customizing captionis the best option.
And a lot of places offerall caps as an option.
Then there’s my favorite‘Karaoke Style’ caption
which is basicallythe word is highlighted
highlighted as it’s sung or spoken
(41:12):
that’s why I call it karaoke style
and it’s so distracting
my eyes start followingthe karaoke and
there’s not understood
does not get the idea of the message
Because it’s soIt’s playing follow the ball
and it’s not readingit’s not absorbing the information.
(41:34):
However, there are a tiny percentage of people
who benefit from that as well
and that is also an available optionin some streaming networks
where you can have each word highlighted
But when we're talking the majority
You’re neglecting that
And unfortunately Instagramthey've got like
(41:55):
five different variations of captions
you can choose from.
And the very first one
Changes size, is all caps
Is just, yeah...It’s like that
And I think people just go with itbecause that’s the default.
Right
So it’s like, they need to make the accessible one the default.
and people don’t change
(42:15):
Anyway, there’s a reason captions are boring
and have been boring all these years
it’s because they work.
They are not meant to be the show.
They are not meantto be the star.
The videoand the content of the video
is supposed to be the star
and this Hormozi stuffis taking away from that
(42:35):
If the companymaking the video
cannot make good content
they shouldn't be makingthe video at all
If they depend on theirHormozi captions to get eyeballs
to get people to payattention, then
their content could be better.
Right
That's what I think.
Right
Yeah, and it's like the whole video
(42:56):
it’s like a whole industrynow of how to make those things.
It's not not.
Oh my God.
Yeah, you canThere’s so many websites and apps
that add captionand they do the fancy stuff
And they’re givingpeople choices
and people don't know the best practices.
they don’t know these things they don’t look into it
(43:17):
And I'm not,
frustrated with them
I just know the
They don’t live with captions every day like I do
That's why I'm out thereeducating every day.
Because I can only reacha tiny percentage
of the world
through LinkedIn or where ever I’m posting
Well, hopefully we'll get a little bit more,
(43:38):
get you a little bit more reach after this.
But let's shiftgears a little bit
and talk about the change in technology
and how that'schanging everything.
Because you mentioned
when you were a little girl,you had some manual machine.
You had tohook up to the TV.
we've seen a lot of progress with itwithin AI and, you know,
we used to usea service like Rev.ai
(43:58):
And I used to joke, you know,they had a person generated closed caption
or you could buy the computergenerated closed caption.
And I think the price differencewas like ten x
and the computer generated one,this is years ago
was only about an 80% solution,and you almost spent
as much time fixing itas you would have had.
(44:19):
If you just tried to do it yourself.
The technology has comea long way.
I do my Adobe closed captionsnow right here on my laptop,
and it's again, it'snot 100% solution,
but it’s come so far.
How do you see,
you know, kind of the change in technology
in making it a little biteasier for people
to start to add this featureto their videos.
(44:41):
AI can't work by itself.It’s needs to have human intervention
because it is never 100% correct
and it also depends
on the sound quality,the video quality.
If we've gotboth got microphones
good chance it’ll be on the more accuratethan other one.
(45:01):
But of courseI have an accent, a
A deaf accent and
those apps are biased
against my accent even though
most people I meet understand me
and they understand most of what I say
not 100%
So you can say my words is like an automatic caption, they’re
(45:22):
so not completely perfectin my pronunciation
But that's okay. I,I know that, yeah,
I joke about it
Right.
I remember when I first tried Instagram auto captions
and it was so muchwork to fix it
they’ve gotten much better
I still have tofix it every time
but now it’s just a few thingsinstead of a lot
(45:43):
So it's a great starting point.
The key is to edit it
And they’ve saved you so much time editing
otherwise if you don't,
Just one word.
One letter can throw you offand you're confused.
I have a video screenshot of a
(46:03):
song on a Super Bowland one letter was wrong
and it was enough to through the whole lyric out.
I was like,It did not make sense at all
That’s how muchso
80% is not impressive
95% is not impressive
because you're missing
just enough words and letters
(46:23):
to not get the whole idea.
Yeah, well, if it makes you feel any better,
I had a run where I was interviewing
a bunch of peoplewith British accents,
and I think if I had set it upto just say British accent,
it would have worked fine.
But having an American accentand a British accent on the same interview
(46:44):
it just destroysthe auto-magic closed caption.
It just cannot deal with the,
I don’t know if it’s becausetheir expressions are slightly different
and they're
kind of emphasis on wordsand their accent on words
is different,but they struggled.
So don't, don't feel bad.
It's not just it's not just you
Yeah.
See, that’s another thing about automatic, AI
(47:08):
even if somebody was born
speaking English
if they have an accentthat’s British,
Australian, Canadianbut they were
they grew up that’s all they speak is English
It doesn’t work with their accent
I mean it worksbetter than mine,
but it's so different from American
standard basicAmerican accent
(47:30):
not something that’sreally heavy
You know, like, maybe
Boston, or
Right
Sorry, no offense Boston
I’m just trying to thinkof an example of
how, well sometimesthe southern draw
might be hard to tell.
yeah.
So AI is biased and then that
it expects perfect American Englishwith no emphasis
(47:54):
No heavy accent
in the way
Yeah,
Yeah,
So, shifting gearsa little bit, about with Covid
and what happenedwith, with, Covid.
So you gave your TED talkafter Covid.
So congratulationson your TED talk.
Thank you.
One of the themesthat comes up over and over,
whether it's the future of workor many, many things,
(48:17):
is that Covid was an accelerant
to things that were already underway.
And you talk about normalizingin your TED talk with your son,
you know, that it's normalizedto have text on screen.
For me, I think, you know,when the NFL did the draft
and Goodell wasin his basement,
you know, that kind of normalized video calls
and, you know, it made it.
(48:38):
If the NFL can do it
you know, then that then it's okay.
so Covid really changedI think
everyone's perceptionof closed captions,
everyone's acceptance of closed captions,
the perceived, value outsideof an ADA context.
So I wonder if you can speakabout how Covid has
has kind of changed people's receptionto your messaging.
(49:02):
Well like you said Jeff it
Covid accelerated the needto put captions out there because
Before Covid, Zoom, Microsoft Teams
they did not have captions
and after Covid
Like within four, five months, they had them.
But it was complicated.
on how to turn them on
(49:23):
In fact,
I still run into Zoom accounts that don't have captions turned on yet.
They don't know it
There’s one step every single Zoom account must do
one timeand one time only
then everythingit’ll always have captions.
But I still have
Two weeks ago I ran into an accountthat didn't have it turned on yet.
(49:46):
So that, that's whathappens when a product
is not born accessible.
If Zoom had built the product
with captions from the beginning,
it wouldn’t be this complicated,but that's another story.
So as we all went
to video calls all the time
people were finding they needed captions
(50:07):
not just the deaf andhard of hearing but others
and it was just a
a huge step toward normalizing accessibility
So I use captions as a great starting point
So when we all see it, and we run into it every day,
it becomes no big deal
Right
therefore, accessibility, all accessibility,
(50:30):
should be like that
We need to learn to accept there will always be ramps
in the right places.
Now ADA says that you have to have a ramp
if you have a building, right.
But it does not mean that you have to put it in the best place
And, it just saysyou have to have a ramp.
(50:50):
It doesn’t say howto make it a good experience
So for example, you have a restaurant
You put the ramp aroundthe back of the restaurant
but all your customers are coming in the front
Its not fair for that one customer who uses a wheelchair
to have to go around the back
That’s not a gooduser experience. So,
(51:11):
that's wasthat’s my whole,
Captions have definitely explodedbecause of the pandemic.
We’re seeing so, so many apps
I mean, my guide has a list of apps
the list keepsgetting longer.
And I'm like, I don't know, whysome company bother with it?
Because there’s too much competition now.
Yeah.
(51:32):
So
I hope that carries over to other accessibility things
Yeah, it's good news.I mean
I had Ryan Anderson on from MillerKnoll.
big design company, and theytalk about inclusive design.
So trying to think of the personwho needs the help first.
And if you designedwith them in mind,
(51:52):
generally there's benefitsto everybody else too.
you know, even as this closed caption thing,
as we've been talking about it
benefits a lot more than just people they can't hear.
There's all these kind of secondary benefits that maybe
people don't think about,or maybe not as obvious until they
till they get into ita little bit.
Yeah, that's why I always
(52:13):
So there’s a great cartoon.
A whole bunch of peopletrying to get into a building
and there is snow all over the ground
and the person shoveling is shoveling the snow off the steps.
And a person who uses a wheel chair says
Well, if you shovel the ramp first then we can all get in.
(52:33):
and the person says
when I'm finished with shoveling the stepsI’ll do the ramp
it's like, oh my God,
clear the rampbefore you clear the stairs
and you’ll get everybody in
[Jeff] That is really[Meryl] That simple
[Jeff] really [Meryl] universal design.
That's a good one.
So simple and,so simple and clear I love it.
(52:54):
All right.
Well, Meryl, we’regetting to the end of our time.
And I've really enjoyed it.
I got a few more questions,
but I want to give youthe last word,
to kind of encourage people.
What should they think aboutwhen they think about captions,
you know, what are thethe most common problems
that you see that people havethat they have to get over
so that they can have better captions,
on their media and get betterleverage on their media.
(53:18):
Well, there’s lot of things I see
But I will say, captions are not meant to be your brand.
They're not meantto represent your brand
In other words if your brand colors are orange and white
The captions are not going to be orange and white
if you want themto be accessible
In fact, orange and white.
are not accessible colors because the contrast is very small
(53:42):
So somebody who has trouble with that
is not going to be able to see your words at all
and if they have the sound off, that’s even worse
so stick with boring captions,
more people will get your message
more people will benefit
and you will get toexpand your reach
Great. Well thank you Meryl.
It's been a real treat.
(54:03):
And, if they needmore information,
they can go to Meryl.net there's all kinds of information
and side by sidecomparisons and,
statistics on the use of captions
for people that,that aren't hard of hearing or,
just a tonof wealth of information.
And what's the bestway for them to contact you?
they can go throughMeryl.net
or email me at
(54:24):
Me - M E at Meryl.netme@meryl.net
And you're on LinkedInand Twitter and all these other
[Jeff] platforms to right[Meryl] Oh yeah.
LinkedIn is goodyeah
All right. Well, Meryl,thanks again.
It's been a real treat.
And glad we were finally ableto get this together.
Yeah me to Jeff It was a real treat for me too.
All right.
(54:45):
She's Meryl,I'm Jeff.
You're watching ‘Turn the Lens’
Thanks for watching.We'll see you next time.
Thanks for listeningon the podcast. Take care.
Thank you.
That was great, Meryl.
That was good. I was very happy with it.
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