Live captions and translation

Captions make a talk readable, and translation makes it understandable for people who don't share the speaker's language. Both help more people than you might expect: attendees who are deaf or hard of hearing, people watching on mute, people in noisy rooms, and anyone following a fast speaker in their second language.

There are two broad approaches. AI captioning turns speech into text in real time and costs much less per hour. Human captioners and interpreters cost more and need booking ahead, but they handle accents, jargon, names and crosstalk better, and they can follow meaning instead of sound. Many providers offer both, and some combine them, with people correcting AI output as it appears.

For accessibility needs, check what accuracy you can expect and decide if a person needs to do the captioning for a particular audience or setting. Give the provider your speakers' names, product names and technical terms in advance, since those are where AI captions most often go wrong.

For multilingual events, decide whether attendees need captions in their language, translated audio, or both. AI interpretation can deliver several languages at once to attendees' phones. Human simultaneous interpreters remain the standard for high-stakes sessions such as negotiations, legal or medical topics.