Deafness Forum is part of a group of not for profit organisations representing people who rely on captions for information, which draws attention to the growing issue of inaccessibility of online audio/visual content.
We are concerned that while there is an increasing amount of web video content being auto-captioned, the vast majority of these captioned videos are not being reviewed for accuracy, readability or comprehensibility.
In the same way that any text document published online is reviewed and edited for accuracy, captioned content needs to be reviewed and edited for accuracy, readability and comprehensibility before being published on the web.
A survey of Australian Government-associated websites found that a wide range of problems exists, ranging from video with no captions, video captions with minor misspellings and videos with completely incomprehensible captions. Access to government information and services, political party policies and parliamentary member’s communications is an integral aspect of our democratic society. When inaccurate captions bar access to this information people who rely on captions are at risk of being excluded from full economic, social and political participation.