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Live subtitling for talks and tours

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Live subtitling for talks and tours

We can partner with your organisation to make cultural events of all kinds more accessible. Wherever conversation is live and unscripted, we can help a wider audience enjoy it to the full by providing real-time, verbatim subtitles.

Perhaps you’ve invited a guest lecturer to speak at your museum or are leading a tour around your gallery’s new exhibition. You might be hosting a Q&A with a director or convening a panel of authors at a book festival. You could also be hosting events, talk, and panel discussions online using Zoom, Facebook, or any other streaming service.

If you thought providing subtitles would be impossible in these cases, think again.

We work with highly trained speech-to-text reporters (STTRs), who use specialist phonetic keyboards to deliver up to 300 words per minute at 99% accuracy. The subtitles are so fast and so accurate, audiences find it hard to believe they are being typed live by real people: but automated subtitles aren’t currently available at this level of accuracy or accessibility.

Depending on your needs, we can display these subtitles online, on screens as part of your presentations, or on handheld devices to give your audience the best possible experience.

If you’d like to discuss further, please contact our Live Subtitling Manager, Courtney Rudge.

Contact Courtney

How it works

What’s our first step?

Drop us a line, as far in advance of your event as possible. We’d advise getting your access sorted before tickets even go on sale, but at least three weeks in advance of the event: STTRs are in high demand.

Courtney is on hand to discuss your event, talk about the platform or space available and answer any of your questions about how our live subtitles work in practice. She can walk you through the options available, and help you choose the best route for you.

Because we believe all events should be accessible, we’re proud to work with our delivery partner, MyClearText. MyClearText share our values for high quality access, they work with a wider pool of expert STTRs, and they also provide technical support for more complex events. When you come to make a booking, we may put you directly in contact with the MyClearText team.

How do we need to prepare?

Producing accurate live subtitles takes a lot of training and preparation. We only use the highest-skilled STTRs to provide the highest-quality subtitles.

In advance of your event, our STTR will need some prep material from you to ensure the process runs smoothly. This includes information on any difficult names or technical jargon that will be talked about. If possible, they will also need to read through any presentation slides ahead of time to understand the topic. This extra information will be programmed into the STTR’s machine, improving the speed and accuracy of the final subtitles. If you are using slides, we recommend leaving space for the subtitles.

We’ll work closely with your technical team to get everything prepared in advance, including setting up audio feeds and linking up any equipment. Once everything is ready to go, our STTRs are a safe pair of hands to ensure your accessible event runs smoothly.

What will happen on the day?

We produce our live subtitles remotely, so we don’t need to be in the room to make your event accessible to audiences who are deaf, deafened or hard of hearing.

Working remotely, we can subtitle your event from almost anywhere in the world. Provided there’s a strong internet connection and a clear audio feed, it’s no different to being there in the room. Our STTRs can follow your event in real-time and send live subtitles directly to online platforms, or to screens or tablets at your venue.

Working remotely has become the standard since the start of the pandemic. As well as being perfect for online events, this approach opens up a wide range of spaces, including outdoor and remote locations. It’s cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and more efficient: we can subtitle live events all across the UK, with no travel or accommodation expenses, or the need to cart equipment between venues.

What equipment do we need?

For us to work remotely, all you need is a good internet connection and a strong audio feed. If your event is in-person, you’ll need your own screen or tablets to display the subtitles. We are happy to supply tablets for your audience to use if necessary. These will come set-up and ready to go, completed with subtitling apps and comfortable carry cases.

In the small number of cases where we work in-venue, our STTRs bring their own equipment, including specialist keyboards and laptops, and will also bring all the hardware required to output the subtitles onto your screens or tablets as required.

Where can we reach the right audience?

We can promote your event on our website, which includes a comprehensive selection of accessible events. Once you’ve booked your event, we can feature it on our listings page for free. We can also help you spread the word to deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences through our newsletter and social media channels.

Subtitles are useful for a very wide audience. There may be people in your audience who don’t book access tickets, but still use the subtitles. Some people choose not to disclose that they are deaf, deafened or hard of hearing, and others use subtitles for different reasons, including to aid concentration, or to support literacy. So it pays to include information on subtitled events in all of your communications.

If you are putting on your own live subtitled event that you’d like to add to our listings, please send us the details and we’ll share it on our website for free.

Contact Courtney

Ask us a question about live subtitles:
If you have questions about live subtitling, fill in the form and our Live Subtitling Manager, Courtney Rudge, will be in touch.

Ready to make a booking?

Use our booking enquiries form to get a quote.

Get A Quote

List your Event

If you’re putting on a live subtitled event, you can share it on our website for free. Send us the details here.

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