Sam Evans talks about being hard of hearing and the importance of captions

Sam asks "why people who produce content where they have the script, they have the content, they have the time, they have the resources, don't provide captions that are accurate?" Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments and the barrier they experience on the web. Just a quick reminder, transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. I would like to thank Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organization from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experience through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable works with your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Nic So today I'm talking with Sam Evans. Hey, Sam, how are you? Sam Doing very well today. Thank you, Nic. Nic We have been talking a lot over the years. I've been trying to organize you coming on this show for a little bit. So I'm glad we finally connect. Let me start with the question I asked everybody. The first question is what's your disability or your impairment? Sam The biggest challenge I face is being hard of hearing I have... I use hearing aids. And so I am very much relying on captions. And if I'm in person with someone lip reading, or if their image is large enough on a screen to compensate for being able to hear and understand clearly what the spoken word is. Nic How does doing video calls like this on a platform where there's not necessarily captions? How does that work? Sam I'm familiar with your speaking tone and, and how that works for you. And having seen your face in person, and a clearer view of your face where we have video while we're chatting. But I turned my audio up. Now if you're if you're covering your mouth, I wouldn't be able to but but I turned my audio up. And I also have my hearing aids tuned in for audio input from a computer device. So I rely a lot on trying to understand context, if it's on a video call. And trying to catch what's happening, I'll often use a secondary tool or device if there's not captions included in the episode or in the event. Most of that is AI. So at best 60%, 70%, maybe 80% accuracy. So it's a lot of guestimation which is a lot of cognitive load on top of trying to engage. Nic That would actually be very tiring. I mean, everybody finds video calls tiring. But if you have to have that added cognitive load on top of it, how... What's the effect, if you have, you know, three or four or five hours of video call in a day? Sam It's exhausting. And for those of us who've come up in trying to multitask and functionally do more than one thing at a time, you cannot do other things other than follow along, listen, try to hear, read and engage. So even if you are dedicated to doing nothing but being on focus, it's still a lot of load. It's mentally strenuous, in addition to trying to take in what audio my ears can hear. Nic All right, so that seems like a pretty significant thing. But my usual second question is what's your biggest barrier or your biggest pet peeve on the web related to your disability? Is it different from from this thing that we've just been talking about? Or? Sam One of the other things that accompanies that, for me is vestibular disability about balance and motion. And so if those two things come together with online video content, it's it can be just absolutely draining for the day. So my biggest pet peeve is why people who produce content where they have the script, they have the content, they have the time they have the resources, don't provide captions that are accurate or don't make the time to invest in accurate and usable captions, perhaps not understand