I-Corps: Real-Time Crowd Captioning

实时字幕可在 5 秒内提供相当于听觉演讲的文本，从而 (i) 为聋哑人和听力障碍人士提供观看现场活动的机会（例如主流讲座），(ii) 法庭上的即时文字记录，以及 (iii) 联邦政府规定的观看直播电视节目的机会。目前，唯一可靠的解决方案是聘请专业速记员。该项目研究了使用技术和相关算法来提供实时字幕。它可以让 3-5 个非专业人士达到与专业速记员相当的水平。由于该技术能够为用户提供更低的价格和更具弹性的劳动力，它可能允许人们以以前无法使用的方式使用实时字幕，例如仅根据需要为他们生活中的秘密事件添加字幕。拟议的研究可以通过提供偶然的机会来改善聋哑和听力障碍学生的教育，例如课后对话或没有安排口译员或字幕师的最后一刻客座讲座。实时字幕也可以用于其他设置，例如政治活动、学校项目、艺术表演，并为组织提供更具成本效益的方式来为现场活动提供高质量字幕。年龄较大的听力障碍成年人通常更喜欢字幕，他们的人口规模相当大，而且还在不断增长。听力正常的人可能会受益，因为字幕是自动翻译听觉语音的第一步。此外，由于 Scribe 允许主要根据领域专业知识而不是打字能力来选择字幕人员，因此可以在具有复杂术语的技术领域收集更准确的字幕，这可能有助于减少 STEM 领域聋哑和重听学生的代表性不足。

Real-time captioning provides a text equivalent to aural speech within 5 seconds, providing (i) access to live events for deaf and hard of hearing people (e.g. mainstream lectures), (ii) an immediate transcript in the courtroom, and (iii) federally mandated access to live television programs. Currently, the only reliable solution is to engage professional stenographers. This project investigates the use of a technology and associated algorithm to provide real-time captioning. It enables 3-5 non-expert individuals to match the performance of an expert stenographer. Due to the technology's ability to provide users with a combination of a lower price point and a more elastic work force, it may allow people to use real-time captioning in ways they previously could not, e.g. to caption surreptitious events on-demand in their lives for only as long as necessary. The proposed research can improve education for deaf and hard of hearing students by enabling access to serendipitous opportunities, such as conversations after class or last-minute guest lectures for which no interpreter or captionist was arranged. Real-time captioning may also be used in other settings as well, e.g. political events, school programs, artistic performances, and provide organizations with a much more cost effective means of providing high-quality captions for live events. Older hard of hearing adults usually prefer captioning, and represent a sizable and growing population. Hearing people may benefit because captioning is a first step in automatic translation of aural speech. Furthermore, because Scribe allows captionists to be selected primarily based on domain expertise instead of typing ability, more accurate captions can be collected in technical domains with complex jargon, potentially helping to reduce the underrepresentation of deaf and hard of hearing students in STEM fields.