Tina Lannin

Tina is the founder of 121 Captions and leads her team with the benefit of her lifelong experience as a captioning consumer. Tina has degrees in business, Japanese, and careers guidance in higher education.

Before setting up 121 Captions Tina worked as a finance director, expert witness forensic lip reader, C&G ATLA lip reading teacher, deaf awareness trainer, and CEIGHE higher education careers consultant.

Tina has been profoundly deaf from birth. In 2012 she had two cochlear implants fitted, giving her hearing for the first time in her life. She now knows what it is like to be both deaf and hearing. Tina uses this knowledge and her expertise in communication strategies for deaf people to inform her captioners’ training and the high quality service 121 Captions clients receive.

Tina also became blind for a time so has a keen appreciation of the communication challenges people with deafblindness experience. As a result she ensures that captions provided by 121 can be accessed on braille machines.

Tina has worked with several well-known brands including Twitter, Al-Jazeera, Disney, plus national newspapers and government agencies. She has provided training courses and talks at conferences across the Middle East and in the UK on captioning, lip reading, and communication solutions for deaf people. Tina is the UK’s foremost lip reading expert and has been the official lip reader for several public events such as the Royal Wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for Sky News.

As part of her real-time captioning, video subtitling, training and consultancy, Tina has helped people to secure senior roles in employment. Through providing effective communication solutions she has supported individuals to prepare for job interviews, transition into employment, and stay in work.

Tina is passionate about ensuring individuals and organisations get access to high-quality captioning services. She provides training to remote captioners around the world. Those who attain the highest standards are then invited to work with 121 Captions as quality-assured captioners.

Tina has been a finalist in the Stelios Awards 2012 and 2013, National Diversity Awards 2013, and won the 2016 Expert Witness Awards.