5 Insane Realities Of Captioning Deaf People's Conversations

Well, some of them do, but if you've ever actually tried to use voice recognition software, you know why it still takes a human operator -- it works great if you're speaking loudly and slowly in a robotic voice, enunciating every word, with no background noise. But, if the speaker has an accent, talks fast, or slurs words due to a disability, etc., the software churns out word salad. One of our sources, JT, says his company's software only guesses the right words about 40 percent of the time, which is approximately the same amount as if he just pulled a handful of magnetic poetry words out of a bag and farted them onto a fridge. And this is what makes his job ridiculous.

See, JT's task is to help the software by listening to the call and then repeating what is said into the machine, using a slow monotone that will make it easier for it to translate. And one thing you find out by doing that job is old dudes really jam on phone sex. This would be totally fine, if they weren't using a captioning service that requires him, a person sitting in an office surrounded by other people who aren't hard of hearing, to repeat everything that is being said in a loud, clear robot voice. Are you picturing this?

"One guy called a sex hotline," says JT, "which I got to start mentally preparing myself for, during the interlude of sexy waiting music (cheesy porn music embellished with a tasteful sprinkling of women orgasming). When the call was connected, I transformed into a woman wearing a bikini because I just got out of the pool and I was all sorts of wet. And all my coworkers around me knew it. Then, the heavy breathing and dirty talk started, and I had to caption the entire thing sounding like I was a Dalek in some really fucked up Doctor Who porn parody."

Our other source, Sarah, actually had it worse just by virtue of possessing a female voice. For some guys, that's all it takes: "Late at night, we get people calling in from hospitals and institutions trying to jack off to the operator. A guy asked me to call a number, and it rang about 20 times until it reached voicemail. I asked him what he wanted me to do, and all he said was, 'Redial.' This happened three times, so I called over a supervisor. The supervisor got on the line and immediately disconnected the call. Then, he turned to me and asked, 'Did you not hear him jacking off on the line?' I could hear noises occasionally, but it didn't register."

Sarah works for TTY, which is a government-funded service, and, again, she has to studiously transcribe without judgment, even during the terrifying calls from the aforementioned prisons and institutions -- racism, insults, and elaborate curses included. "I have to repeat, verbatim, what someone is saying, even if it's something that, in any other situation, would qualify me to get an exceptional beating."

And sometimes they really, really want to jump in. For instance, if you've ever been around old people, you've probably noticed three things about them: A) They are your future and you should be terrified of death, B) They tend to be pretty gullible about new technology, and C) Since all their friends are probably dead (like yours will be someday!), they love a good chat whenever they can get it. That makes them a huge, fat target for scammers. "Scam calls are the worst, and we get them all the time," says JT. "But, no matter how hard Grandpa Joe is falling for a scam, all you can do is caption what's going on as accurately as possible."

Now, if they hear an emergency take place (say, someone is assaulted in the middle of a call), they can report it. But, otherwise, they're just impassive observers. "One woman talked about how she was in bed, and three men pulled her out so hard, she dislocated her shoulder," says JT. "Then, she said that they made dinner for themselves and told her if she wanted any, she'd have to get up and get it herself. That's abuse, plain and simple. She was clearly old and didn't have the strength to take care of herself anymore, so her caretakers (or three oddly considerate kidnappers) decided to rough her up a bit."

Keep in mind, that call wasn't to the police, she was just telling the story to someone. That is typical -- only one in 14 acts of elder abuse are ever reported to authorities. That's usually because the people being abused are worried it will get their caretakers -- almost always family members -- in trouble. But, unless a crime is occurring, the operators just dutifully transcribe the awful story and move on to the next call.

And when there is an emergency, well ...

Knowing what you know about this process, you can guess that there's a delay between speaker and listener, while the operator catches up (usually about four seconds). If that doesn't sound like a long time, try having a conversation where everyone is pausing for that length of time before responding. Now, imagine you're having that conversation in the middle of a life or death emergency.

So, let's say you just polished off your eighth plate of chili cheese fries in one sitting (good for you!), and, suddenly, you start to feel like you're dying (more than usual). You know some shit is going down, and you need help, so you dial 911. The dispatcher is speaking quickly, trying to assess the situation and keep you calm until an ambulance arrives. The only problem? The captioning agent can't caption fast enough to keep up with 911's instructions to help you live to see another chili-cheese-fry sunrise.

"This happened to one of my coworkers," says JT. "Fortunately, it only took the ambulance about five minutes to get there, but everything up to that moment was a frustrating rush against the slow, meticulous guideline of captioning." Sarah's view is even more alarming: "Captioning emergencies doesn't happen often, but when it does, there are so many roadblocks that the likelihood of failure far outweighs any positive outcomes."

In fact, the possibility of you straight-up dying because they couldn't caption fast or accurately enough to save you is significant enough that JT's company's liability waiver for 911 calls encompasses pretty much every possible situation, including, "delays, transmission errors, network outages, acts of God, or other occurrences" that may arise from using their service to call 911.

Though we suppose if your emergency call gets disconnected due to a literal "act of God," maybe it's best if you just ... let the act take its course. There's no reason to make a paramedic risk getting struck by a bolt of wrathful lightning when your beef is clearly with the creator Himself.

Doing this job means having to sit in on some truly horrible customer service calls, which are unpleasant even when operators aren't dealing with A) elderly or disabled types who are still baffled by flip phones or B) the infuriating caption pauses in between their instructions and the customer saying, "Where's the 'Any' key?"

"Customer service never has any patience for the people who need their help the most," says JT. "I captioned a customer service rep who had a really thick accent and who eventually got so frustrated, he dropped the accent and started cussing out my client -- all of which I had to speak in a monotone voice and caption to this poor guy who just wanted to know how to pay his bill online." We're assuming that guy somehow knew the call wasn't being monitored for quality assurance purposes.

The job also makes it very clear that customer service reps have absolutely no idea how to explain things in simple terms once they figure out the client sometimes thinks he's still in 'Nam. "A customer service rep will say something like, 'The start button is at the bottom left of the screen,' and the client, predictably, just gets more confused. They could have said something like, 'The start button looks like a flag,' but they don't have time to care and then everyone involved gets frustrated."

Because, obviously, it's Nana's fault that guy had to get a customer service job at the cable company because the thought "Who needs a GED? The economy's fine!" was a trendy life philosophy back in 2008.

JT's side effects are arguably even weirder. "For the software to include the appropriate punctuation, I have to say 'question mark' or 'period' without inflection. When you're eating dinner with your family, and 'So how was your day question mark' pops out of your mouth, it's kind of hard to convince your kids that daddy hasn't been replaced by a cyborg bent on destroying the human race."

Especially when the truth about how he spent his day is actually quite a bit weirder than that.

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