First Ever Closed Captioning Stream On Twitch!

When I originally wrote my post on how much the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community in the gaming world needs captioning for Twitch streams, for YouTube videos and so much more, I did not expect that progress would come this quickly. I mean within weeks, I watched my very first closed captioned Twitch livestream. I sat there, almost shell shocked and amazed at the whole thing. I kept saying to myself that I couldn't believe that a huge company like Twitch listened along with the help of an awesome group like AbleGamers and did something about it.

The First Ever Public Closed Captioned Stream

A friend alerted me to a very special livestream by Ablegamers who were allowed to livestream a closed captioning test stream with the help of Twitch.

Now who are AbleGamers? I'll let them explain that. They say it better than I can.

"The AbleGamers Foundation, also known as AbleGamers Charity, is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit public charity that aims to improve the overall quality of life for those with disabilities through the power of video games." -AbleGamers.com

Watch live video from Ablegamers on www.twitch.tv

If you don't know how to put on Closed Caption, hover your cursor over the video and click on the "CC" on the bottom right. 

If you want to adjust the captions' size, color, etc, click the gear icon next to the CC. You will see "Closed Captioning." From there, you can do anything. Change text size, color, background of the captions, etc. Go on, play around with the options.

If you watch the entire video, you can see that it's incredibly cool what they've been able to accomplish. This amazing addition will include all kinds of gamers now, even those who can't hear or barely can hear. Even hard of hearing people who have difficulty understanding accents, soft voices or anything that is hard for them to hear.

More Updates On Closed Captioning From Twitch

Then this super cool post from Twitch via Streamer News.

Cool closed captioning updates coming in the near future. #TwitchTownHall pic.twitter.com/CnlKtDKZsZ

— Streamer News (@StreamerNews) September 2, 2016

Twitch is pretty much saying that they have been having internal tests with Twitch Weekly to test their closed captioning in addition to the public test with AbleGamers. But what's even more amazing is that Amazon Pilot Program are using Twitch's caption technology.

Many people have asked how the captions work. Some people were confused about types of captioning.

Three Ways You Can Caption

Closed Captioning - there's a live person sitting and listening to the video, movie, tv show, whatever it is and typing everything down quickly following the entire time which gets turned into a file and uploaded with the video, movie, tv show.

It's almost like the way I caption my videos on YouTube. I type everything down while the video is playing. Although I do pause it when I need to fix typos lol. Then when I'm done, the file gets saved and attached to the video.

But for movies, tv shows, and others, that file gets copied with every single movie, tv show, commerical, anything on the screen, so forth. That's why you can pop in ANY "Beetlejuice" movie and they all have the exact same captions. It's all one file being used.

Automatic Captions - This is a bit different. There's a program that listens to the voice and decides what they sound like they are saying. Believe me, this is not a great program. Sometimes people are captioned saying naughty things when they have not even said it at all. This is the type that you find on YouTube for people who do not want to manually make captions.

Live Captioning - This is what Twitch did. It might be called Closed Captioning, but I call it Live Captioning because there's someone literally sitting, probably 10 feet away, listening to them and typing everything down in real time which gets also uploaded in real time to the stream.

This method also gets used during live news on TV or even Presidential debates which are live. Anything that's live is typed in real time by someone listening to it. They literally hire someone who does the captioning in real time. They really do sit in front of the screen or whatever it is and type it all as it is being said. Sometimes it gets messed up, but it's pretty good 99% of the time. Somehow they also upload it all in real time to all TVs. Don't ask me how.

Bravo, Twitch!

Honestly, this is amazing to me what Twitch has done. I mean the time, dedication, and yes, the money to hire someone to caption in real time. Imagine the hardware, technology and people they had to pull in for this? WOW. Impressive. No matter what you think about Twitch, you can't help, but be impressed.

Starting on September 9th, Twitch is having all of their in-house and event programming captioned. YAY! They also will have captions for TwitchCon on Kappa Theater.

Only The First Step

But the best part is that Twitch is not done yet. They are saying that this is just the FIRST step. I can't wait to see what other improvements they will roll out. I am actually hoping for a way to be added where people who cannot afford to hire a live person to type everything in real time to be able to put up closed captioning. I am deaf and I honestly would use it because hey, not everyone knows American Sign Language. Haha.

Can't wait to see what other innovations they'll be rolling out soon. But for now, if you have a bit of spare money, could you please go to AbleGamers and buy a t-shirt? Every t-shirt goes to support AbleGamers which in turn helps disabled gamers like me. I don't consider myself disabled. I think I'm perfectly normal, but ya get the gist. Thanks!