One of the most considerate features of CSS Conf AU and JS Conf AU was the live captioning. There were three large TV screens in the main theatre, displaying live captions of what the speakers and MCs were saying. The captions were provided by Lindsay Stoker of White Coat Captioning. I stole the picture of Unn with the captions from Jonny!
I wish live captioning was more common at large events. Apart from enabling Deaf and hard-of-hearing developers to get the most from the talks, I noticed heaps of other people who were grateful for them too. Some of the reasons I heard or saw in the event hashtags were:
- People with English as a second language were able to understand all the speakers more easily
- Audience members more easily understood the accents of speakers with English as a second (or third!) language
- People with attention issues (and those who got distracted by their phones!) could keep up with what was being said
I’m also guessing it was easier for the organisers to provide captions for the videos of the talks too.
So if you’re undecided about paying for live captioning at an event, I hope you’ll decide to go for it. It really does help so many people get maximum value from the speakers you’ve worked so hard to present.