[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOSH MILLER: We've heard a lot today
about how modalities change, reaches change.
I can upload a video to YouTube right now, and someone in Spain
can watch it five minutes later.
And that's amazing.
When I went to college, there was no YouTube.
Things have changed dramatically.
We sat on the couch and watched TV, and that was it.
When you talk about user experience,
It was about what can you do with your remote and the cable
box?
Everything is different now.
People are walking down the street watching a video.
People are on the BART watching a show.
People are taking a break while they're
supposed to be working watching something on Netflix.
It is crazy how much this has changed.
So real quick show of hands--
how many people here drink coffee?
Great.
Now, how many of you brew coffee at home
and only drink it at home?
One person.
Great.
So now if everyone else here would go to a coffee shop,
and they say, would you like that for here
or to go, will you say--
most of the time probably to go these days.
What if they said, no, you're going to drink it here?
You'd think they're crazy.
You'd say, give me my money back.
So it's the same thing now with content online.
We're talking about giving people a choice
and letting them consume content in the way that's
best for them, whether they're walking down the street,
sitting at their desk, or even now sitting
on their couch streaming something
from iTunes or Netflix.
So that's really important to keep in mind.
So we've talked about captions.
Remember, everyone, if you go to bar trivia,
first captioned show?
Anyone?
AUDIENCE: Julia Child.
JOSH MILLER: There we go.
All right.
So here's a frame from a popular show.
Seems pretty simple.
Might be nothing.
But if I flipped here--
if you watched Stranger Things, you know, this
is actually really significant.
So it says, "static crackling on radio," "feedback whines."
There's something interesting happening.
And so in the previous shot where
there's no captions whatsoever, there's still no one speaking.
But what's really important is that captions
are capturing not only what's spoken,
but also the relevant sounds to the plot.
And that's something we shouldn't forget.
So now if I'm watching this, again,
somewhere where I can't put sound on
or the background noise of a jet engine or a subway train
is so loud that I can't hear it, this
is the only way I can consume this content.
So let's talk a little bit about why captioning.
We'll get to the more obvious, more traditional reasons,
but this is some data from Facebook.
They measured that captions increase
viewing time on videos by 12%.
That is really significant.
Now, if video is your business, why would
you not take 12% more viewing time?
41% of videos on Facebook are actually incomprehensible
without sound or captions.
That's an enormous amount of content.
Now, what this also says is that video creators are adapting
to the way people are consuming content
and putting text-only videos up because of the way
people are consuming content.
So now there's a question-- which is cheaper,
changing your production process or just adding some captions?
80% of viewers actually react negatively
to videos that autoplay if they can't
have sound or captions on.
This goes back to the coffee issue as well.
If you're telling me how to drink my coffee, I'm upset.
If you don't give me a choice of how
to consume my video content, I'm not going to watch it.
So here's what it looks like in Facebook.
You've got scrolling feed.
There's a video.
I can't pay attention to it, so I'm going to keep going.
Whereas captions-- and I do this subconsciously.
I mean, clearly I'm biassed.
I'm interested in captions.
But I absolutely am scrolling through.
There are captions.
All of a sudden, I've been basically reading
a video for the last two minutes.
And I had no intention of doing that.
But it grabbed my attention.
So going to the education setting now for a second--
in a study we did with Oregon State--
and this was a nationwide study of how students use captions--
this was not paying attention to students
who need captions or don't need captions.
This is just students who had access to captions.
98.6% of them found them helpful for learning,
not because they needed to consume the content,
but because it was helpful for learning.
75% of them were saying they used it as a learning aid.
And the number-one reason for using
captions wasn't because they couldn't hear the content.
It's because it helped them focus.
So now the accessibility side of it--
I think there's no debate.
There are millions and millions of people who actually need
captions, audio description.
There are 60 million people who need it.
What's interesting is turning that
into the reality of a web experience.
71% of people-- or people with disabilities,
specifically-- will just leave a website outright
if it's not accessible.
That's really important.
How can they spend time on your site
if you can't offer them the content?
So what do these companies have in common?
Does anyone want to take a quick guess?
AUDIENCE: They've all been sued.
JOSH MILLER: They've all been sued
for a lack of accessibility on their website
and mostly with video content, and so
have 1,700 other companies.
So a lot of that is related to captioning.
Some of it's audio description as well.
So speech recognition-- we'll go to that first--
is a topic we've talked about quite a bit today,
even, is, is this a viable solution to this captioning
problem?
It's getting better.
There's no debating that.
But is it good enough?
So I'm going to play a quick video.
Here we go.
There we go.
Hopefully we can hear this.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
JOSH MILLER: Sorry, it looks like the audio cable's actually
been unplugged.
Audio is not in the cards today.
But what's important here--
if we scroll ahead--
If you look below, there's a line here
that says, "Growing up in Boston,
I went to the new wing of the Koran
and picked up horseshoe crab."
Now, this is actually about visiting the aquarium
in Boston.
And that's actually really important
because it's not about anything religious.
It's something quite different.
And so speech recognition, in some cases,
will get you the gist of what is happening.
That's great.
But we do want to be sensitive to the realities
of the mistakes it can make.
And In a setting like closed captioning where--
especially if you've got unconstrained speech,
it is very difficult for--
[BELL RINGING]
--for it to work consistently.
OK.
So let's talk about audio description.
Audio description is essentially the complement to captioning.
So it provides an aid for visual impairment.
And it actually explains what's happening visually
on screen for someone who maybe can't follow along as well.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] the audio got lost for the captioning.
[INAUDIBLE] the audio on the computer.
AUDIENCE: The audio for the caption [INAUDIBLE]
got lost [INAUDIBLE].
JOSH MILLER: We're going to try to figure that out.
AUDIENCE: There's a lot [INAUDIBLE]
because [INAUDIBLE] turn up the audio for the computer.
JOSH MILLER: We took it back out.
OK.
We'll see if this is working better.
So in an ideal world, if we had audio,
I would play this video clip, which is a trailer from Frozen.
And the trailer from Frozen has very little speech in it.
But there is an enormous amount of activity.
And if you were to close your eyes,
you'd have no clue what was going on.
You'd hear scratching and all kinds
of noises that would mean nothing
to you without the visual.
But when you turn the audio description on,
it is a completely different picture,
and you can absolutely follow along.
And so I will encourage you-- we have an example
of this on our web site.
I absolutely would encourage you to take a look at it
or certainly search for it on YouTube.
It is a great example of the power of audio description.
So one of the challenges with audio description-- and it's
been alluded to today-- is the cost.
It is behind captioning in terms of innovation.
That's something that we're working quite a bit on.
It's one of the biggest projects we've been working on
over the last year.
And how do you use technology to make this more scalable
and more user-friendly?
So we're looking at things like synthesised speech.
How do we enable more usability and really address
even the reality that many media players don't support
audio description very well?
So that was one of the things that I
think everyone should really understand with what Terrell
was talking about that the idea of a truly accessible media
player is actually still pretty rare.
And so that's something that we need to work on.
And we've certainly worked on a few workarounds
for that reality as well.
So the point of all this is to think, again,
about content consumption.
This doesn't have to all be about accommodation.
This is about enabling people to consume the content the way
they want to consume it in the way that is best for them,
whether it be a learning aid or because they are now
walking down the street.
And so us as publishers need to take that very seriously.
And clearly you're here because you care about this stuff.
The hope is we can start changing
the tone of the conversation with everyone
so they can appreciate that this isn't just about accommodation.
This is about enabling content to be consumed, period.
So I'm happy to take some questions or I'll turn it over
to the rest of our programme.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I saw a study out of England, and I
haven't seen anything similar.
I like your statistics about how many people--
JOSH MILLER: Are you talking about the BBC study?
AUDIENCE: It was a study that said
that 80% of the people that use captions
are not deaf and hard of hearing.
And I wonder how many studies there are like that.
JOSH MILLER: Yeah.
So the question was about there's a study that I believe
was commissioned by the BBC.
It came out of the UK, for sure, a few years ago,
that said that 80% of people who used captions
had no hearing disability whatsoever.
We've done some studies of our own,
and the numbers were actually pretty close.
I think they're in the 70's percent.
We haven't seen other studies quite like that, either.
But I think that's probably pretty accurate,
that the majority of captioning users
are not doing it because of a hearing impairment.
AUDIENCE: So I'm wondering why this hasn't been understood
more widely by businesses that want
to try to get more customers because-- well, [INAUDIBLE]..
I don't want to use too much time.
But they've never, ever-- when I'm sitting across
from opposing counsel, there's never a recognition
that it might actually be good business.
JOSH MILLER: Right.
So the question is about why aren't people recognising that
it's good business?
Great question.
I think that's the goal.
I think that's the idea, is that we
need to change the tone in the conversation for people
to understand that this is good business.
A great example of this-- and we were talking with Ken who works
at YouTube and Google--
about this exact piece of the conversation
that this isn't just about deaf and hard of hearing.
This is about what's good for business and the reality
that content consumption has changed.
And we need to recognise that.
A great example-- think about the everyday things
we're all accustomed to, like sidewalk cuts.
Well, if you have a stroller or a suitcase,
you're using that constantly.
It's not just for accommodation, which is what it was originally
created for.
Automated doors that open and close
in the grocery store or the airport or wherever you may be
was originally designed out of an accommodation.
We all take it for granted.
Video needs to catch up and basically
beat us in and be talked about the same way.
All right, Arlene, can I invite you up, then?
All right.
We'll move right on to Arlene Mayerson.
[APPLAUSE]