Subtitles for VOD, whose responsibility is it anyway?
i heart subtitles UK based charities behind the #SubtitleIt campaign received a letter from Ed Vaizey, Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy. It was not the response that the campaign had hoped for. Action on Hearing Loss have summarised: Mr Vaizey has told us that, during autumn 2015, Department for Culture, Media and Sport officials […]
Mon, May 02 2016

A look back at 2015
i heart subtitles 2015 saw a lot of accessibility advocacy around subtitles/captioning and audio description with some great victories. This is by no means a complete list but does summarise some of the highlights for me. Amazon Instant Video UK finally started added subtitles to their VOD service after much campaigning which had its origins in the Love […]
Sat, Jan 16 2016

#SubtitleIt campaign and other UK regulatory news
i heart subtitles Earlier this year Action on Hearing loss created a survey to gather the experiences and thoughts of subtitle users access to video on demand (VOD) services in the UK.  The results have been published and the report titled Progress on Pause is well worth a read. It’s part of the #SubtitleIt campaign which is a […]
Sun, Oct 25 2015

Live Music & Live Lyrics & Live Subtitles
i heart subtitles Last month I did something I've never done before, and I don't think many others will have done it either. What was it? I attended a live music gig with live subtitles! The gig was called Club Attitude. It was organised by Attitude is Everything and the live subtitling was provided by StageTEXT.
Fri, Apr 10 2015

#withcaptions Fixing You Tube’s auto-captions
i heart subtitles As most of you reading should already know, You Tube does use automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology to automatically create captions from the audio track of uploaded video content on its site but these are very rarely, if ever accurate. But what if you could fix these to make them accurate, rather than have to start from scratch to create accurate captions? T...
Thu, Feb 19 2015

Accessible film making or what if subtitles were part of...
i heart subtitles I was prompted to write this blog post by a recent tweet from director Samuel Dore who bemoaned the fact that he felt that film directors and distributors seem to ‘moan’ about the cost of subtitling content: Distributors moan about the time & money it takes to create subtitles when this means they get a few […]
Thu, Jan 08 2015

How subtitles add value, not just access
i heart subtitles The added value of subtitles and captions has been a repeated theme at various conferences that I have attended over the last few years, and its one of my favourite topics so I am going to write another blog post about it now.
Thu, Jan 08 2015

Access 2020 – Languages & The Media 2014
i heart subtitles Access 2020 was an interesting panel hosted by Alex Varley at the 10th Languages & The Media conference. The theme was for the panel to discuss what they thought media access might look like in 2020. Although it is difficult to summarise all of the discussions, Media Access Australia have written a summary of 20 […]
Thu, Jan 08 2015

Accessible film making or what if subtitles were part of...
i heart subtitles I was prompted to write this blog post by a recent tweet from director Samuel Dore who bemoaned the fact that he felt that film directors and distributors seem to ‘moan’ about the cost of subtitling content: Distributors moan about the time & money it takes to create subtitles when this means they get a few […]
Mon, Dec 22 2014

How subtitles add value, not just access
i heart subtitles The added value of subtitles and captions has been a repeated theme at various conferences that I have attended over the last few years, and its one of my favourite topics so I am going to write another blog post about it now.
Wed, Dec 10 2014

Access 2020 – Languages & The Media 2014
i heart subtitles Access 2020 was an interesting panel hosted by Alex Varley at the 10th Languages & The Media conference. The theme was for the panel to discuss what they thought media access might look like in 2020. Although it is difficult to summarise all of the discussions, Media Access Australia have written a summary of 20 […]
Wed, Dec 03 2014
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Smart Technologies, Smart Translations – Languages...
i heart subtitles The  theme of this years Language & The Media conference was Smart Technologies, Smart Translations with a panel and audience discussion on machine translation, speech recognition, and cloud technology.
Sun, Nov 23 2014
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The Power of Accessibility: A Personal View from a...
i heart subtitles A transcript of a presentation I gave to attendees at the 10th Languages & The Media Conference 2014 in Berlin.
Fri, Nov 14 2014

MOOC’s, Learning and Education
i heart subtitles Please don’t think a lack of blog posts over the summer means a lack of interest in the subject of all things captioning and subtitling, far from it. In fact in an attempt to improve my skills and knowledge, one of things that I’ve been busy with is learning. I took my first steps into […]
Tue, Sep 23 2014

Invisible Subtitled Live Theatre – Trial in the UK
i heart subtitles Giojax, the company using 3D technology to create invisible subtitles for use by cinemas have just announced that the same technology is to be trialled in the theatre. Originally set up as a crowd-funded business, the now private company with private investors is running a trial of the invisible subtitles technology to subtitle a musical […]
Tue, Sep 23 2014

CSI TV Accessibility Conference 2014 – Live...
i heart subtitles Earlier this month the CSI TV Accessibility Conference 2014 took place in London. I had hoped to be able to give a more detailed write up with a bit of help from the transcript of the live captioning that covered the event but I’m afraid my own notes are all I have and so I […]
Tue, Sep 23 2014

MOOC’s, Learning and Education
i heart subtitles Please don’t think a lack of blog posts over the summer means a lack of interest in the subject of all things captioning and subtitling, far from it. In fact in an attempt to improve my skills and knowledge, one of things that I’ve been busy with is learning. I took my first steps into […]
Fri, Sep 19 2014

Invisible Subtitled Live Theatre – Trial in the UK
i heart subtitles Giojax, the company using 3D technology to create invisible subtitles for use by cinemas have just announced that the same technology is to be trialled in the theatre. Originally set up as a crowd-funded business, the now private company with private investors is running a trial of the invisible subtitles technology to subtitle a musical […]
Thu, Jul 24 2014

CSI TV Accessibility Conference 2014 – Live...
i heart subtitles Earlier this month the CSI TV Accessibility Conference 2014 took place in London. I had hoped to be able to give a more detailed write up with a bit of help from the transcript of the live captioning that covered the event but I’m afraid my own notes are all I have and so I […]
Fri, Jun 27 2014

Subtitling and Captioning Campaigns
i heart subtitles Spring has arrived, and with it seems to be some new campaigns on the horizon relating to subtitling advocacy. It seems more people are getting frustrated at the lack of captioning or subtitling that is available to them or at least have become more vocal about it online in attempt to create change. Just before […]
Mon, Apr 28 2014

2013 in review: i heart subtitles blog
i heart subtitles The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 19,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many […]
Thu, Jan 02 2014

The Killing – Christmas Jumper Day (with subtitles)...
i heart subtitles Today is Christmas jumper day in the UK. A charity campaign from Save The Children. Check out this video of a clip of popular subtitled Danish series The Killing also with its own ‘translation’ subtitles: Hope it made you smile! Maybe not if you understand the orignal language, but I love the idea for the […]
Fri, Dec 13 2013

Information Safety Video – Virgin America...
i heart subtitles Thanks to @mxincredible for alerting me to this. Think safety videos for air flights are boring? Take a look at this one from Virgin America with some great visuals used in the subtitles:
Thu, Dec 05 2013

Machine Translation & Subtitles – Q&A with Yota...
i heart subtitles Something I have not blogged much about to date is the topic of machine translation and its use within a subtitling context. Having read about a project titled SUMAT I was lucky enough to asks questions on this topic with Yota Georgakopoulou: Q1: What does SUMAT stand for? (is it an Acronym?)

 Yes, it stands […]
Thu, Dec 05 2013

Information Safety Video – Virgin America...
i heart subtitles Thanks to @mxincredible for alerting me to this. Think safety videos for air flights are boring? Take a look at this one from Virgin America with some great visuals used in the subtitles:
Sun, Dec 01 2013

Machine Translation & Subtitles – Q&A with Yota...
i heart subtitles Something I have not blogged much about to date is the topic of machine translation and its use within a subtitling context. Having read about a project titled SUMAT I was lucky enough to asks questions on this topic with Yota Georgakopoulou: Q1: What does SUMAT stand for? (is it an Acronym?)

 Yes, it stands […]
Fri, Nov 08 2013
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SMPTE Internet Captioning Webcast
i heart subtitles This webcast posted by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) is a good introduction to current US captioning regulatory requirements and new requirements due to come into play in the USA. All US broadcasters must caption content online that has previously been broadcast on linear TV by the end of this month. […]
Thu, Sep 12 2013

Captioned Music – automated vs human skill
i heart subtitles Here are two fun videos that illustrate two very different results when captioning music. The first is lyric video for One Direction lyrics as captioned by You Tube’s auto captioning system. (You can also view the results of Taylor Swift’s lyrics) Machine translation does have a role to play in providing access and despite these […]
Thu, Sep 12 2013

Subtitles to learn a second language – resources
i heart subtitles A lot of viewers to this blog are using search terms that seem to relate to using subtitles to learn a second language so depending on feedback I get I may later change this blog post into a page for reference in the future.  My question is how many good resources are there on the […]
Thu, Sep 12 2013

SMPTE Internet Captioning Webcast
i heart subtitles This webcast posted by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) is a good introduction to current US captioning regulatory requirements and new requirements due to come into play in the USA. All US broadcasters must caption content online that has previously been broadcast on linear TV by the end of this month. […]
Thu, Sep 12 2013

Captioned Music – automated vs human skill
i heart subtitles Here are two fun videos that illustrate two very different results when captioning music. The first is lyric video for One Direction lyrics as captioned by You Tube’s auto captioning system. (You can also view the results of Taylor Swift’s lyrics) Machine translation does have a role to play in providing access and despite these […]
Thu, Aug 15 2013

Subtitles to learn a second language – resources
i heart subtitles A lot of viewers to this blog are using search terms that seem to relate to using subtitles to learn a second language so depending on feedback I get I may later change this blog post into a page for reference in the future.  My question is how many good resources are there on the […]
Mon, Aug 12 2013

Q&A with Films14 Director Shaun Sadlier
i heart subtitles A fully subtitled from launch, with the aim to also eventually provided full BSL signed movies from a Video On Demand service.  Imagine that? Well one business entrepreneur Shaun Sadlier is planning to do just that through Films14.  Read the Q&A from Shaun below and watch the video for more information: Q:  Your service is […]
Mon, Aug 05 2013

Off-screen cinema subtitles
i heart subtitles Readers who are keeping up to date with subtitling solutions and projects might be pleased to know that the former Indiegogo project for a subtitling solution for cinemas is a project now being developed by GeoJaX Ltd and Mystery Technology LLP. Entrepreneur George Georgiou and inventor Jack Ezra have teamed up to form “GioJaX Ltd” […]
Wed, Jul 31 2013

Off-screen cinema subtitles
i heart subtitles Readers who are keeping up to date with subtitling solutions and projects might be pleased to know that the former Indiegogo project for a subtitling solution for cinemas is a project now being developed by GeoJaX Ltd and Mystery Technology LLP. Entrepreneur George Georgiou and inventor Jack Ezra have teamed up to form “GioJaX Ltd” […]
Wed, Jul 31 2013

Sherlock – The Clue is in the Subtitles
i heart subtitles I have blogged previously about this popular BBC TV series before and how Sherlock uses visual text on screen as part of the storytelling process (this is actually one of my most popular posts for hit counts!). Last week the BBC did something rather cool involving the subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing […]
Mon, Jul 22 2013

CEA – UK published report on cinema subtitling...
i heart subtitles Back in March 2013, some, including myself were lucky enough to take part in a trial to test some personalised technology that provides subtitles to cinemas. The trial took place in London and was organised by the Cinema Exhibitors Association and they have now published the results to those that attended. I have summarised the […]
Mon, Jul 22 2013

Sherlock – The Clue is in the Subtitles
i heart subtitles I have blogged previously about this popular BBC TV series before and how Sherlock uses visual text on screen as part of the storytelling process (this is actually one of my most popular posts for hit counts!). Last week the BBC did something rather cool involving the subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing […]
Mon, Jul 15 2013

CEA – UK published report on cinema subtitling...
i heart subtitles Back in March 2013, some, including myself were lucky enough to take part in a trial to test some personalised technology that provides subtitles to cinemas. The trial took place in London and was organised by the Cinema Exhibitors Association and they have now published the results to those that attended. I have summarised the […]
Tue, Jul 09 2013

Taylor Swift -Auto captioning fails
i heart subtitles Ever wonder what You Tube’s auto-captioning would make of Taylor Swift’s song lyrics? Wonder no more thanks to this funny video from Rhett and Link. Enjoy!
Tue, Jun 04 2013

Taylor Swift -Auto captioning fails
i heart subtitles Ever wonder what You Tube’s auto-captioning would make of Taylor Swift’s song lyrics? Wonder no more thanks to this funny video from Rhett and Link. Enjoy!
Tue, Jun 04 2013

Talktitles
i heart subtitles Reblogged from TX Creative P1: As I was looking for some good looking (and free) fonts I happened to stumble upon Lev Berry’s online graphic design portfolio. Not only did I find an awesome free font called Monstre, inspired after hand painted lettering from 1882 (I highly recommend it to anyone who likes playing with […]
Tue, May 21 2013

Talktitles
i heart subtitles Reblogged from TX Creative P1: As I was looking for some good looking (and free) fonts I happened to stumble upon Lev Berry’s online graphic design portfolio. Not only did I find an awesome free font called Monstre, inspired after hand painted lettering from 1882 (I highly recommend it to anyone who likes playing with […]
Tue, May 21 2013

Guest blog post: A view on cinema subtitling technology
i heart subtitles I received the following comments from a UK-based reader which they requested be published on this blog anonymously. It concerns subtitling and captioning technology that is currently already in use in cinemas in countries outside the UK. To be clear, there currently is no official word as to whether these personal technology solutions will be […]
Mon, May 20 2013

Guest blog post: A view on cinema subtitling technology
i heart subtitles I received the following comments from a UK-based reader which they requested be published on this blog anonymously. It concerns subtitling and captioning technology that is currently already in use in cinemas in countries outside the UK. To be clear, there currently is no official word as to whether these personal technology solutions will be […]
Mon, May 20 2013

Cinema subtitling technology – could 3D be the...
i heart subtitles To quote from my previous blog post: The UK film industry is currently investigating recently-developed solutions that could improve the cinema experience further for people with hearing loss. For example, ‘personal’ inclusive caption/subtitle solutions are now available from Sony, Doremi and others that, instead of projecting captions on to the cinema screen, dis...
Mon, May 13 2013

Cinema subtitling technology – could 3D be the...
i heart subtitles To quote from my previous blog post: The UK film industry is currently investigating recently-developed solutions that could improve the cinema experience further for people with hearing loss. For example, ‘personal’ inclusive caption/subtitle solutions are now available from Sony, Doremi and others that, instead of projecting captions on to the cinema screen, dis...
Mon, Apr 29 2013

History of subtitling and cinema in the UK
i heart subtitles 

The film industry is forever devising new ways to capitalise on technological advancements to attract audiences. But back in the 1920s, and on the verge of going bust, Sam Warner, co-founder (with brothers Harry, Albert and Jack) of small studio Warner Bros. introduced some fancy tech that, with the help of jazz singer Al Jolson, [...]
Sun, Apr 28 2013

Festival Of The Spoken Nerd – subtitled comedy
i heart subtitles Last week I attended an event captioned by STAGETEXT but this time it wasn’t a play but live comedy. Consequently rather than scripted and cued captions being used, the comedy event called Festival Of The Spoken Nerd was captioned live by a stenographer. To get an idea of the comedy show style watch this clip: [...]
Sun, Apr 28 2013

History of subtitling and cinema in the UK
i heart subtitles 

The film industry is forever devising new ways to capitalise on technological advancements to attract audiences. But back in the 1920s, and on the verge of going bust, Sam Warner, co-founder (with brothers Harry, Albert and Jack) of small studio Warner Bros. introduced some fancy tech that, with the help of jazz singer Al Jolson, [...]
Sun, Apr 28 2013