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Debate captioning first a blessing for deaf (and others) | National Business Review (NBR) New Zealand - Business, News, Arts, Media, Share Market & More
Sick of politicians yelling at each other? Push the mute button and use a captioning service designed to help deaf people keep up with TVNZ's televised election debates.
TVNZ captioning manager Anna Donald said when Prime Minister Helen Clark and National leader John Key went head-to-head for the first time on Tuesday was also the first time the deaf community could read live what was being said in a TV election debate.
Previous years, transcripts had been available on the TVNZ website after the debate, she said.
The rest of this year's live election coverage would be captioned, said Ms Donald.
The captions were provided by an Australian company, The Captioning Studio.
The Captioning Studio used a stenography machine and people using this machine could type at a minimum of 250 words per minute, she said.
The machine used at TVNZ, the Dual Qwerty machine, could only do around 150 words per minute, said Ms Donald.
The feedback was "really really positive" and people had really appreciated the comprehensive coverage, she said.
One of the difficulties for the stenographers would have been when the leaders interrupted each other, said Ms Donald.
"How they dealt with it, was the most dominant voice that was coming through they captioned, and then if someone shouted over the top of them they left that caption where it was interrupted and put a dash, and then they started captioning the next person, and if they were interrupted they put a dash."
It would have been quite difficult for the stenographers to keep up, said Ms Donald.
The cost to get the events captioned in Australia was more expensive than TVNZ using the Dual Qwerty, she said.
Captioning future live events would depend on TVNZ's resources, said Ms Donald.
Sick of politicians yelling at each other? Push the mute button and use a captioning service designed to help deaf people keep up with TVNZ's televised election debates.
TVNZ captioning manager Anna Donald said when Prime Minister Helen Clark and National leader John Key went head-to-head for the first time on Tuesday was also the first time the deaf community could read live what was being said in a TV election debate.
Previous years, transcripts had been available on the TVNZ website after the debate, she said.
The rest of this year's live election coverage would be captioned, said Ms Donald.
The captions were provided by an Australian company, The Captioning Studio.
The Captioning Studio used a stenography machine and people using this machine could type at a minimum of 250 words per minute, she said.
The machine used at TVNZ, the Dual Qwerty machine, could only do around 150 words per minute, said Ms Donald.
The feedback was "really really positive" and people had really appreciated the comprehensive coverage, she said.
One of the difficulties for the stenographers would have been when the leaders interrupted each other, said Ms Donald.
"How they dealt with it, was the most dominant voice that was coming through they captioned, and then if someone shouted over the top of them they left that caption where it was interrupted and put a dash, and then they started captioning the next person, and if they were interrupted they put a dash."
It would have been quite difficult for the stenographers to keep up, said Ms Donald.
The cost to get the events captioned in Australia was more expensive than TVNZ using the Dual Qwerty, she said.
Captioning future live events would depend on TVNZ's resources, said Ms Donald.