Andy Eachus is a Digital Skills Trainer at the University of Huddersfield. He supports students and staff with assistive technology and ensures all university content is accessible.
The University of Huddersfield upholds an accessibility policy that all lectures are recorded and captioned. However, Andy’s major challenge was the poor quality of automated captions from university software. When students returned to university following the COVID-19 lockdown, students (particularly those with hearing loss) had become accustomed to having captions. On their return, students frequently asked Andy, “Where have my captions gone?“
Caption.Ed immediately filled this need. Andy states that “there’s still a lot of media placed onto platforms that use automated, inaccurate captions, so being able to use Caption.Ed, on top of that, is really useful.”
When introduced to Caption.Ed, Andy was particularly impressed with the speed of the captions generated. Living with hearing loss himself, he explains that not having delays in captions is incredibly important from an accessibility standpoint. If he’s using captions and there’s a delay, he misses what’s being said while waiting. So by the time the word arrives, he’s lost the current context. The words must return quickly to avoid him missing key parts of the conversation.
Andy has received some really positive feedback from his students using Caption.Ed. Before Caption.Ed, he explains that his students didn’t bother with recorded lectures because of the inaccurate captions. But armed with Caption.Ed, they now watch their recorded lectures all the time.
Andy also likes that Caption.Ed is customisable to suit his students’ particular needs and preferences – the ability to change the font colour, background colour, and size of the Caption.Ed widget means that it’s not just catering to individuals with hearing loss; it’s catering for people with conditions like Dyslexia as well.
Caption.Ed is an inclusive product, and for Andy, this is exactly why he recommends it.
For me, Caption.Ed was the only choice based on the fact that I'd seen it demonstrated and was blown away by how quickly the captions came back. It was the logical one to use. I would definitely recommend Caption.Ed - it's just the one that does the job the best.Andy Eachus
