Charity’s clever use of live streaming during coronavirus lockdown viewed 300,000 times

Through the lockdown the charity, which supports more than 380 deaf people in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, created 41 videos about coronavirus.

CDA has 80 members of staff and volunteers, with 85 per cent of its staff using sign language.

Chief executive Andrew Palmer said: “Streaming live is becoming more and more popular out there but deaf people are often excluded from it because it’s either not captioned or isn’t in sign language.

“We’ve been working on using technology to be able to create our own live streams and caption them at the same time. This means people who can hear, can’t hear or use sign language can all see what’s being said.

“I think we’re among the first to be doing this so I’m very happy about that and also so proud of Ky Dai and Gemma Crossland who presented the first live stream we did. They talked about our membership scheme and what’s on next week.

“The captions are automatically voice generated so while the two presenters are signing, off-screen an interpreter is translating what they are saying and that is being fed into the live stream too in real time. Unfortunately, there are some mistakes in the captioning but we will work to improve that.

“We use off-the-shelf and free streaming software and freely available voice transcription too so it’s possible for anyone to achieve the same feat. We’d be happy to show other organisations how they could make their content more accessible by live captioning.”

Andrew added: “During lockdown we focused on providing information in British Sign Language about the virus. To date we created 41 videos specifically about coronavirus or facemasks and communication and so many more aimed at reducing the isolation of lockdown.

“All together we had over 300,000 people view our content, all of which was in British Sign Language and captioned. I have to pay tribute to our staff and volunteers who worked so hard and were so enthusiastic when preparing and presenting the videos.

“It’s very important to the deaf community that information is accessible online, especially when lives are at risk, so we’ll continue to look at ways to improve what we’re doing.”