The wonder of live captioning

I’m in the middle of a conference call with five other people, taking a brief on what they want me to write for their website.

One person is travelling on a train, two are in an echoey room, one has a strong Australian accent and the last one is in his car.

It’s hard enough for most people to hear everyone clearly in that situation. And I’m deaf.

But I have an advantage over everyone else. While I’m on the phone, the text of the conversation is appearing on my laptop in front of me. A captioner from 121 has joined the call and is typing the conversation for me to read – word for word in realtime.

I can ‘hear’ clearly what everyone is saying. I am able to interject with my thoughts or advice as needed, and, because the live captioning is so quick, I laugh at funny comments and witticisms at the same time as everyone else.

The team I work with know that a captioner is on the call and will watch, open-mouthed, as an accurate record of the conversation streams across my laptop screen.

But most of my colleagues don’t realise I use this facility. This is because the captioner joins the call well before it is due to start and will sit there patiently until the conference begins (though how they cope with the muzak for so long I don’t know!).

Another bonus of having the captioner is the transcript of the call I receive as soon as the call has finished. Obviously it’s not a formal record of what was said, but it’s a great contemporaneous note that I use to check my understanding of the conversation, and what the actions follow from the call.

And all this comes for free – well to me anyway. That’s because it’s one of the reasonable adjustments that Access to Work will accept and pay towards if an assessor confirms live captioning is what you need.

Live captioning from 121 has been a God-send for me. Running my own business with clients all round the country would be an incredible challenge without it. For the first time in a long time I am able to participate in phone calls, confident that I will ‘hear’ everything accurately and be able to contribute fully to the conversation.

Lisa Caldwell runs her own business as a copywriter at Ministry of Writing. She has severe/profound hearing loss after gradually losing her hearing over the last 8 years. You can get in touch with her at credocommunications@gmail.com