Live Captioning Canada

Project Objective

The primary objective of this project is to better understand how the presence and nature of play-by-play captioning of fast-paced live sports programming contributes to or detracts from the user experience and satisfaction of live sports programs. User experiences and satisfaction are evaluated for deaf and hard-of-hearing users of live captions for ice hockey and basketball.

This research project builds on the Understanding User Preferences in Live Captioning Research Project with the aim of gaining in-depth insight into which factors contribute to a good user experience and which contribute to a poor user experience for live play-by-play captioning of different sports.

Rationale

Play-by-play captioning of fast-paced live sports presents particular challenges for captioners and users alike. Specific issues with live sports captioning include speed of speech (and hence the rate at which captions appear on screen), delay between captions and action on screen, placement of captions on the screen (e.g., covering some of the action and/or banner information), verbatim captioning vs summarizing/paraphrasing vs absence of play-by-play captions, among others.

In the BAF-funded Understanding User Preferences in Live Captioning Research Project that was completed in 2018, user satisfaction was lowest in the live sports category across all user groups, and there were significant differences in satisfaction ratings between user groups. One of the conclusions that the study reached was that

"There was no clear direction as to whether live sports should be captioned, or what form the captioning, if done, should take, especially in fast-paced sports such as ice hockey.”

Play-by-Play Captioning in Sports Research Project

Project Objective

Rationale