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Readability of Punctuation in Automatic Subtitles

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12377))

Abstract

Automatic subtitles are widely used for subtitling television and online videos. Some include punctuation while others do not. Our study with 21 participants watching subtitled videos found that viewers reported that punctuation improves the “readability” experience for deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing viewers, regardless of whether it was generated via ASR or humans. Given that automatic subtitles have become widely integrated into online video and television programs, and that nearly 20% of television viewers in US or UK use subtitles, there is evidence that supports punctuation in subtitles has the potential to improve the viewing experience for a significant percentage of the all television viewers, including people who are deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/.

  2. 2.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/speech-services/.

  3. 3.

    https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/.

  4. 4.

    https://www.android.com/accessibility/live-transcribe.

  5. 5.

    https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6373554?hl=en.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the National Science Foundation, grant #1757836 (REU AICT) and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR #90DPCP0002). NIDILRR is a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents of this paper do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gallaudet University, Washington, DC, 20002, USA

    Pablo Jakubowicz, Christian Vogler & Raja Kushalnagar

  2. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Promiti Datta

Authors
  1. Promiti Datta
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  2. Pablo Jakubowicz
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  3. Christian Vogler
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  4. Raja Kushalnagar
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Raja Kushalnagar .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute Integriert Studieren, JKU Linz, Linz, Austria

    Klaus Miesenberger

  2. Jack Baskin School of Engineering, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Roberto Manduchi

  3. Dipartimento di Meccanica, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Mario Covarrubias Rodriguez

  4. Support Centre for Students with Special Needs, Masaryk University Brno, Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Peňáz

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Datta, P., Jakubowicz, P., Vogler, C., Kushalnagar, R. (2020). Readability of Punctuation in Automatic Subtitles. In: Miesenberger, K., Manduchi, R., Covarrubias Rodriguez, M., Peňáz, P. (eds) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12377. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58805-2_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58805-2_23

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-58804-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-58805-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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