JOLY: Here's a message from Cameron, who I invited to come today, sending regrets. He can't make it today. And the one thing that I did kind of have on the agenda was that -- I don't know if you noticed yesterday that Facebook announced... Here I am, coming over with this... A new service to caption Facebook Live video.

MIRABAI: Ah, cool. I assume it's not automated.

JOLY: So you schedule a Facebook Live video, book your live captioning, and they provide your captions and set up your streaming service. So it's all built in here.

MIRABAI: Cool.

JOLY: This is by this company called AI.

MIRABAI: Ahhhh, AI Media? There's a story there. Heh.

JOLY: I guess that story is gonna stay offline, eh, Mirabai?

MIRABAI: I mean, the short version is they say they have a ton of work, but they're only paying $60 an hour for it, which means they're probably not going to be able to find very good captioners. So we'll see how that works out for them.

JOLY: Well, we'll see that they're actually charging $3 a minute. So they're charging $180 an hour.

MIRABAI: Wow. That's what I call chutzpah. Yeah, they originally told me they would pay $100 an hour, so I was like sure, why not. And then they dropped the rate, and I was like... Thanks but no thanks. I have a feeling I'm not the only captioner who said that. We shall see how it goes for them. There aren't so many of us... I'm not sure about that. Bad captions can be worse than no captions sometimes. And bad stenographers can output total gibberish.

>> Joly, I'm here.

JOLY: Judith!

>> Yes! Who else do we have with us? Who is MKK?

JOLY: That's Mirabai. Who is also our stenographer. Can you see the screen on the...

>> Yeah, yeah. So we're testing a different one. You didn't want to test Zoom Rooms?

JOLY: Not this week. I'm leaving that for another week. We've got this cheap and cheerful method...

JUDITH: Well, we have no one here.

JOLY: Well, we have the three of us here.

JUDITH: Joly, I can't come down... I have to go to Argentina next week. For a project. So I was... I had proposed to volunteer. I had scheduled to volunteer, to participate in the big M enabling conference here next week.

JOLY: That's in DC, right?

JUDITH: Yeah. It would be great if you could come.

JOLY: I'm... That's the one that Glen did last year, I remember.

JUDITH: Yeah, I could tell the woman you would take my volunteer spot. Because I reneged on it.

JOLY: I don't know. I mean, I'm just looking at my calendar here. But highly unlikely.

JUDITH: Yeah. And Fred is here.

MIRABAI: Hi, Fred!

JUDITH: Welcome, Fred!

JOLY: I see the (inaudible) forum is next week.

JUDITH: Yeah.

JOLY: Yeah, I'm booked here, Monday, Tuesday, maybe Wednesday...

JUDITH: Can you... Fred?

FRED: Yeah, hello. I'm going now.

JOLY: I muted him.

JUDITH: Oh,  good. So that's the story. It would have been a great thing.

JOLY: We can ask around. There could be someone else who wants to go.

JUDITH: They have to have... They have to go to the... There's a volunteer session on Monday. To go to. To get your -- to do your assignments.

JOLY: I mean, if I was you, I would post it to the...

JUDITH: I don't...

JOLY: The a11yDC group.

JUDITH: I don't think I would like to do that, because...

JOLY: Because they're all meat-eaters?

JUDITH: Well, no. It's because I'm thinking... I've given... I didn't say... I didn't... I don't think... I'm not sure if they're looking for new volunteers. I was looking to cover my slot, because I hate doing that. But I don't want to, like, if they're not really open to all volunteers. Not... You know...

JOLY: Anyway, I'm not coming. That I can say.

JUDITH: Yeah. And we're the only ones involved, really.

JOLY: I mean, I can... You know, I'm on an accessibility Slack. I can stick it on there, if you want to send me an email.

JUDITH: No, I don't. I think... I think you can send them that this is happening, but I think... It's a paid conference.

JOLY: Yeah. But you were a volunteer?

JUDITH: Yeah. I signed up about a month or two ago, as a volunteer. Two months ago, as a volunteer.

JOLY: Well, if you can't do it, you can't do it.

JUDITH: Right.

JOLY: Now I'm wondering why these stupid yes-ware things are showing up. I thought I disabled it. Deactivate. There you go.

JUDITH: But Joly... Maybe Mirabelle, you have clues... I'm looking for a sponsor. For captioning. For the IGF-USA.

MIRABAI: Dunno. Happy to do the captioning, but I'm not sure about sponsors.

JOLY: Yeah. The... They actually have three rooms, Mirabai.

MIRABAI: White Coat could do it.

JOLY: I think they've been using Caption First.

JUDITH: We're looking for a funder. We're looking for someone to fund.

JOLY: Yeah. So... I don't know. Mirabai might give you a better rate than Caption First. But... I gave you the information I had. You know, SSB BART have... Are the people who do the New York accessibility Meetup.

JUDITH: Maybe if you want to write to them. I just don't have the bandwidth anymore.

JOLY: Ah. Okay.

(computer chime)

JOLY: I'm writing this on my piece of paper here. Large letters. Okay. So... And I'll talk to Mirabai about it offline.

JUDITH: Yeah. If you guys can find anyone.

JOLY: I'll tell you, Mirabai, that the day on this is July 24th.

JUDITH: Yeah. And also, Joly, you can push -- this is the only slot that has branding on it.

JOLY: Only slot with branding? How would you brand it?

JUDITH: You would say captioning provided by -- last year it was Facebook. And that gets plastered everywhere.

JOLY: Oh, at the event, you mean.

JUDITH: At the event. On the live stream afterwards. On the YouTube. Everywhere.

JOLY: Did we add it? I don't remember doing that.

JUDITH: We did last year, with Facebook.

JOLY: Yeah.

JUDITH: They were the sponsor. First year we didn't -- we had only 2000, and we only covered the main rooms. The main day. The main room and that whole day.

JOLY: So Mirabai, if you don't know Judith, I would like to introduce you to her. She's a tireless campaigner for the captioning, and with ICANN has organized a lot of captioning on their online remote participation.

MIRABAI: Yes, hello!

JUDITH: And Joly, according to this, in my pilot that I was running, small pilot -- gave one session, outside of at-large, the workstream for diversity... Apparently, unknown to us, until last week, they loved it so much... That they asked... They asked for funding, and they got funding for it to cover every meeting.

JOLY: Which meetings are those?

JUDITH: Workstream 2 diversity. You know? The ICANN workstream 2? The diversity subgroup.

JOLY: That's actually obscure for me, to, like, I know workstream 2. But I did not realize they had... Subgroups.

JUDITH: Many subgroups. And apparently they now have their own budget.

JOLY: Well, that's good news.

JUDITH: And they liked it so much that they got captioning for all their meetings. But we only found out that recently, because it was -- ours was -- Rob Hogarth, who was -- you know, put out a third pilot. And it got him to the core of ICANN budget. So we're demoing it in the core. And Rob was the contact person. And he also did not know there was another group within ICANN that now was doing captioning.

JOLY: And so you were using Caption First and the Adobe Connect plugin? 

JUDITH: Apparently. They asked at-large who -- Sylvia, who they were using -- Sylvia gave them the contact information and they made their own contract, unbeknownst to us.

MIRABAI: That's pretty cool.

JOLY: That's good to know. Mirabai likes that.

JUDITH: Yeah. It's pretty cool, but, you know, we have to figure out if we're gonna do the ICANN thing in the core, and we're gonna demo it, and we want to roll it out to everyone, we need to find out who else in there is doing it, so we can plug stories. Because otherwise, you can't. And you're missing half the thing. You're missing a lot of promotion that you could be doing. Because workstream 2 is very important.

JOLY: Yep, it's central. Yes.

JUDITH: Right. And so if they are big proponents of it, that's gonna be a big push for us. They also -- the other thing we also need to figure out is how close captioning is to transcripts.

MIRABAI: Depends on the captioner.

JUDITH: And I have the people...

JOLY: They would do transcripts anyway, right?

JUDITH: Well, they would cut one out. The idea would be... They're paying for transcripts now that are supposed to be verbatim. But they aren't really verbatim. And there's no real standards. So we're trying to find out what are the standards that they're paying for transcripts? And if we find that out, then we could find out what the standards are for captioning. Because apparently they're not giving away rough captioning... Rough captioning is not something that Caption First is telling anyone that's possible. You pay extra to get them fixed up. But they're not called rough anymore.

JOLY: They're also not verbatim in my experience.

JUDITH: Not verbatim either. But the question is... The transcripts we may get from ICANN may also not be verbatim. And if that's the case, then what's the... Then why... Then we could use... So the thing is: If the captions we're getting from Caption First are 95%... Then why are we paying a lot extra for transcripts that are made after the call? So these other transcripts that are being paid for are made from the audio files. So someone listens to them again and transcribes.

MIRABAI: 95% is really, really bad. That's an error every sentence.

JOLY: Mirabai says 95% is really, really bad. That's an error every sentence.

JUDITH: I don't know. What do you think? What were the transcripts, when we were doing it a while ago?

JOLY: I really don't know. I know that with the IGF, when we had them do transcripts, I had to go through them pretty painstakingly, and correct them afterwards. Even the corrected ones. Judith is having another conversation.

MIRABAI: I think the transcript completeness and accuracy depends a lot on the captioner and also to some degree on the speaker. As you know, Joly, sometimes my a11ynyc transcripts are almost totally accurate without any editing, but sometimes less so.

JUDITH: I don't know. What... So... So the question is: Also I want... Is I want someone to take -- we have a copy of a transcript that was done through audio, and we have the same copy of the Caption First. And we asked the secretarial staff to do a comparison. And see what the difference is.

JOLY: So you did that already?

JUDITH: No, we asked for that. We don't know the answers.

JOLY: I'll say to Mirabai's point that she's an exceptional stenographer, and we can't expect that level from everybody. We understand that.

MIRABAI: You could hire me. (':

JUDITH: And Mirabai can't do this. Because it's too big a group for her. It's just one person.

JOLY: She has colleagues.

JUDITH: But ICANN is too big a contract. And they want Spanish and French too.

MIRABAI: I think White Coat Captioning could take a pretty big contract. Not sure about Spanish and French, though.

JUDITH: It needs a big firm. So that's the problem. We need a firm to do English, Spanish, and French. Anyway... If you have any ideas, I'm gonna take a call, and then call... And I'll join you guys back in about, like, 10, 15 minutes. I guess it's only you and Mirabai.

MIRABAI: Did Fred leave?

JOLY: We'll talk to Fred for a minute, and if nothing else, I'll have Mirabai caption a video that we can watch. You know, I don't have anything particularly in mind. But maybe the one I posted earlier today from Sally.

JUDITH: Yeah, I didn't get a chance to watch that. No, Fred is still here. He's still listed.

FRED: Yeah.

JOLY: Okay. See you later, Judith. And let's talk to Fred. Fred, switch your camera back on.

FRED: Okay, sir. Yeah. Hello.

JOLY: Here. I've got my video on. I had forgotten I didn't switch my video on. But actually, just before I start, this is what I'm trying now, which is mixing my Zoom with the captions on the screen. And that works pretty good. It seems to me. I mean, I can't see how it looks to you.

MIRABAI: Looks good from here.

JOLY: But it looks good to me. How does it look to you, Fred? How I have it now with the captions? Fred is frozen. Maybe your connection isn't so good.

FRED: I wasn't seeing it, but now it's okay. Looks like today where I am the internet connection is not that fast.

JOLY: No. So do you have anything to report from Ghana?

FRED: Yeah. Uh... The only activity that I've been doing for this week was I signed up to volunteer for the ICANN group mounted at the -- one of the hotels. During the Association of African Universities conference. So I just left that, and I've come home, and I decided to call.

JOLY: Well, I thank you, Fred, because you're our most regular attendee. Second to none.

FRED: You're most welcome. But with regards to the captioning, I think... What Judith talked about is quite (inaudible).

MIRABAI: Sorry, quite what?

FRED: I hope she will get the funding. That we will be able to get that. But I think it's also very awesome. Because that was last week, I remember you were explaining how you went about... You realized the time was passing, so we had to end the call.

JOLY: Yes. The nuts and bolts of stenography. And I do plan to post that video. But I had a busy week, and I haven't got to it yet.

FRED: Okay.

JOLY: Okay? So... I see we have another guest here.

MIRABAI: Hello!

JOLY: I wonder if that person has... Doesn't seem to have audio or video. Oh, let me fire up the chat here. I hadn't done that. I don't see any way to make chat... I'm hearing some strange noises. Animal noises. From you, Fred. Okay. Well, Guest does not seem to be able to speak right now. So... So if we have time, it being... I also can't see my clock here. I have a clock over here. We still have half an hour. So maybe we should... We could look at a video. And so... The one that I did think we could do was the one of Sally from this morning. Speaking at the EuroDig. Which is here. Speaking on the future of the internet.

>> We will continue with our second keynote speaker of the morning. Sally from ICIRC. You have the floor.

(applause)

>> Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming out for this conversation, and thanks to Pierce. I think the presentations that you'll see from the Commission and from the Internet Society have a lot in common, and also I think a lot that we can learn and share from one another. So I appreciate that. I know Internet Society Cathy Brown was in Brussels yesterday for that event. So there's a lot talk going on about the future. So this is, I think, a good moment. I think a number of us have reached the conclusion that, as you said, this is the time to look up, look out, look into the future, and think carefully about the kind of internet that we want over the next five to ten years. I was asked here to walk you through a project that the Internet Society has taken on, beginning last year in 2016, to think through many of the issues that Pierce raised as well. About: What are the things that are driving the future of the internet? What are the values that we hold dear, and what are the things that we all collectively need to do to bring about the kind of future that we want? And so we are reaching a point in this project where we are approaching some conclusions or at least a report that we can give to the community, and so I wanted to give you a little bit of a preview in terms of some of the things that we're finding. And so I have slides, which I suppose is unfortunate, but there we go. I think it's important, when we look at the future of the internet, this is not about saying we have a crystal ball that we can predict the future. But rather, particularly at the Internet Society, this is our 25th anniversary. I'm supposed to do the shameless plug, so there we go. We have some history as a community to draw on. We have some background in how the internet developed. We have some ideas about what has made it successful, and I think as a community, we can draw on that basis of information, and look to the future, and project into the future some of the things that we think are either concerning to us or the opportunities that we want to preserve. So as I said, in 2016, we launched this effort, the internet futures project, at the Internet Society. And many organizations do things like scenario planning. It's a tool that's often used to get people in a room to think big, to think differently, to think creatively, about what the future might hold. And then make some decisions about how their organization or company or government might act in light of that. We decided to turn that on its head a little bit at the Internet Society, and do this effort as a global community. For those of you who are familiar with the Internet Society, we have chapters and members all over the world. We interact with people like yourselves and communities everywhere. And so we thought we would really take advantage of that to get input from our community over the course of the last 18 months, on where what they believe are the things that are driving the future of the internet. So we did this through a number of roundtables with interviews, with surveys. The surveys keep going. So I think some of these numbers might be a little out of date. But the idea is that through all of this, we've gotten a lot of very interesting information from our community, in terms of the things -- from where they sit in the ecosystem, whether it's a business person in Africa or a civil society person in the United States, or an academic in India -- what are the things that they believe are driving the future? This will culminate in September, in our global internet report, and will then be the basis of our annual meeting at the Internet Society, which will take place largely online, as a meeting that goes around the globe in mid-September. So as I said, the goal here is to understand the forces of change. What do we think will drive the future of the internet? Get a global perspective on what that trajectory looks like, and then importantly, I think, try to make some recommendations with a dose of humility, but make some recommendations on what we think different stakeholders -- including the Internet Society -- might do to shape that future that we want. So this is what our community has come forward with. And I'll just walk you through this a little bit. Rather than doing just four scenarios about the future, which is how this works -- you get in a little quadrant, and you plan the future -- what we found in our community is that people are focused on about 6 different areas that they think are driving the future. And I'll just walk through these, briefly. This notion -- and this is not gonna be a surprise to many of you in this room -- how the internet interacts with the physical world. The deployment of IoT that's ongoing now, that's only going to accelerate -- that will have an impact on how the internet rolls out. Obviously the internet economy. Consolidation or competition. Can somebody start the next new big thing, or will the big players kind of close out future opportunities for entrepreneurship? The role of government. I think it's very clear that government is playing a bigger and bigger role in the internet. How that role takes shape, the kinds of interventions that governments make in the marketplace, the reactions to security, the reactions to rights and freedoms -- these are the sorts of things that are gonna change the future of the internet and the minds of our community. Obviously things related to cyberthreats. We know that cybercrime, cyberattacks, cyberterrorism, cyberwar -- these are all things that are on the minds of many of us. We see it often. We know it's only going to accelerate. How those things -- how these kinds of cyberattacks take hold, the ability of the community to address them, is going to shape the future of the internet. Interestingly, issues related to artificial intelligence came up across the board. This was an area that people are really thinking about. They're not really sure how it's going to affect them. But they're very focused on this issue of artificial intelligence and what it means for the future. And then finally, network standards and interoperability. Can the network and the standards that support it evolve and change to meet the demands of the future? There's a real question about whether open standards will continue to be accepted or whether we'll see a move to proprietary networks. Whether there will be the right incentives to do the things at the network layer that many of us don't look at every day, but that will allow the network to grow in scale. So those six areas are interesting. I think. But what we found was even more interesting was that our community was looking at the interactions between these drivers. They're not just saying IoT is gonna shape the future and that's it. But rather they're looking at what is the -- what are the interactions between things like the deployment of IoT and how the marketplace unfolds. Or the role of government in reaction to cyberthreats. But even more important than that, I think, to us, is this -- this group of issues that we call impact areas. The community is very focused on three main areas, in terms of the future of the internet. The first being the future of personal rights and freedoms. What is the implication of marketplace consolidation or competition on my ability to speak freely, going forward? My ability to create the next big thing? The evolution of the digital divide. We hear a lot that it's not going to be in the future -- it's not going to be about who has access to technology, and who doesn't. But I think this is something similar to what you said. Is: What will my ability be to do something with that access? Will I be able to benefit from the opportunities of the internet? So it's not just about being online or offline. But do I have access to the benefits itself? There's also something that we're starting to see, in terms of the digital divide shaping around security. People who have the capacity or access to security technologies or the ability to protect themselves, versus people who don't. And the divides that that might bring about. And then finally the implications of all of this for media, culture, and society. So, again, going back to these drivers, what does it mean -- and I think this is a conversation that will happen in the next panel -- but what does the deployment of artificial intelligence mean for society? We hear a lot about the loss of human agency. The ability of people to make decisions for themselves. And what does that mean for society at large? As you have displacement of industries and disruption in the marketplace? So these are things that people are interested in. But the thing that I would emphasize, that we are taking away from this, is that none of these things acts in isolation, but that there's these interactions between them. And I'll just go very quickly through the rest of this. The way we'll shape the report is to try to take some quotes from the community, from the interviews, as well as some of the data from the surveys. And I think one here that we found was particularly interesting is this idea that the economy is changing far faster than the rules that are governing it. The system we have in place to regulate business is stuck in a 20th century notion of how the economy works. So this idea that we -- do we have the tools, the policy tools to deal with the technology that's coming before us? And what do we have to do today to make that possible? We do hear a lot of worry from our community about the role that regulation will play and whether the regulation and the regulatory tools we have today are up to the task. On artificial intelligence -- this is a quote that I love -- this is from one of the Internet Hall of Fame experts. You have the uncertainty of what the inputs are. The magic of what the process is doing and driving at a conclusion which are for our good -- and that is a terrifying prospect in my mind, because we have no idea what's going on. This is from somebody who helped create the internet from the earliest days, who's still thinking about the deployment of artificial intelligence and really wondering what does this mean for humanity. And so on the one hand, people see artificial intelligence as a huge opportunity space, a huge new direction -- or some people would say we've been heading in this direction for many years. On the other hand, people don't understand how that's going to affect them as human beings. And I won't go too much -- I'll stop here. As I said, we're gonna be making some recommendations as a result of this. I think one of the conclusions that's interesting is in all of these drivers and in all of these impact areas, the thing that comes out over and over again is people are thinking about: What is the role of civil society, going forward? And they're not sure if civil society will still have a seat at the table. So I think we as a community need to be thinking very carefully to make sure that end user voices, the voices of civil society, are still part of the model. And I know everybody is reticent to talk about the multistakeholder model, but people draw on that to ensure that they have a seat in the table, that they have a part in the discussion. So I think we need to be really focused on that. So I will stop there. We hope that you will participate in all of this. I think there's a lot in common with what the commission is doing. And I think Renalia will hand it over to you in your group to continue the discussion. Thank you.

>> Thank you very much, Sally. Thank you.

JOLY: Well done.

MIRABAI: She's a good speaker.

JOLY: I'll stop that right there. Okay. Yeah, Mirabai. That's Sally Wentworth, who's our vice-president in charge of global public policy. So she's obviously a good speaker. And she was rushing it, so I appreciate you keeping up there. And that's the Eurodig. Yep. Happening now in Estonia. So I saw that they -- it looked like they had Text on Top going there. Didn't it look like that to you?

JUDITH: Yeah, I think so. I think they may have. I don't know. I'll find out.

MIRABAI: Yeah, looks like it.

JOLY: But they were streaming through livestream. They certainly didn't have any captions going through livestream. That's for sure. I grabbed it from livestream and put it up on YouTube. Yes, Judith?

JUDITH: Did you see the email? We're trying to get the disability chapter into one of those things.

JOLY: No, I got into that for ISOC NY. I'm not sure that we have enough... That we have enough momentum within the disability chapter to do any (inaudible) right now.

MIRABAI: Any what?

JUDITH: But it says members will send proposals to you, and maybe you can talk about it. Because I wasn't in there.

MIRABAI: 'Thonning? 

JOLY: I haven't seen anything recently today, but it happened a month ago. So I have to remember, but... Yes. That's essentially how it works. Is that proposals come from your members, and you had to, like, put your name up in the first place as a chapter, which I did.

JUDITH: Right.

JOLY: And... I can't say that much more right now.

JUDITH: Okay. Yeah. So anyway... As usual, Washington, D.C., did not do anything.

JOLY: Well, they have other fish to fry. Like the IGF.

JUDITH: Yeah. Anyway, so that's what it is out there. So...

JOLY: Yeah. I mean, it's possible that the New York chapter could make some kind of accessibility issue... There is a thing within -- between us and Accessibility New York. Is to, like, make -- a sort of project to make best practices for running captioning at Meetups. And even as we go today, we're using this new tool today. Whatever it's called. Afloat.

MIRABAI: Yep, Afloat.

JOLY: Which is a new development. As a way of captioning on a screen, instead of having to, like, split the screen between your captions and your thing. Which allows remote captioning, you know, whereas the thing about Text On Top is that Text on Top only works within a local environment.

MIRABAI: Though I think they're developing a new thing that works remotely.

JOLY: And also it costs money.

JUDITH: Joly, on another thing -- we casted you in a technology task force of fixing up the conferencing solutions for Zoom. Adding in your thoughts.

JOLY: Oh, you did?

JUDITH: Yes, because you know Zoom so well.

JOLY: Marginally well, yes.

JUDITH: But also, the question is: On Adobe, the issue is... Is you put them... You have the StreamText, but you can also have the pods. But it's confusing to have more than one pod on a screen.

MIRABAI: I've heard that the Adobe pod isn't good, but the StreamText Adobe pod is okay.

JUDITH: So if we have Spanish captioners and English ones at the same time, we would have to decide who gets -- I guess the pod? Or do we put both on?

JOLY: I think first that Mirabai said that the StreamText pod -- the Adobe pod is crap and the StreamText pod is good. And I think we are using the StreamText pod, as far as I know.

JUDITH: No, because we use Caption First, we're not using the Adobe pod. We're using the Caption First pod.

JOLY: I think that is the StreamText pod.

JUDITH: Oh, it is?

JOLY: Yeah. Pretty sure. And then I think that...

JUDITH: But can we have the two pods? Is it gonna be too crowded? Or do we have to make...

JOLY: Yeah, you know, the solution would be to have separate Adobes for each language. With the text of the chat being translated into, like -- shared between all three languages. Shared and translated into the language of... Whichever Adobe you're in. In my opinion. So then you could have French audio with French transcription and French chat, and...

JUDITH: Joly, the problem with that -- we went down that route. You need an additional staff person to watch each Adobe.

JOLY: Well, if they want to do it, that's the only practical way they can do it. Otherwise, you know, what you do is... The people on the alternate languages have to just be... They just have the StreamText in that language and an alternate audio source. Which is how they work it now.

JUDITH: Right. So the thing -- how that works is that if a caller calls, the audio is in Spanish -- the Adobe audio, the audio that comes out from the Adobe is in Spanish. The English comes on the phone, because you're dialed into the English Channel. And the same thing with the French. And the Portuguese.

JOLY: Well, if you've got audio, it doesn't matter where you're getting it from, except when it comes to the interaction, if you want to talk. If you want to say something, then that's where the issue comes. But you just have to have the translator speak at the...

JUDITH: They do. That's what it is. But then people using the hand raising -- if they're on Adobe, they'll use the hand raising for that.

JOLY: Yeah. There's not a problem with that. You can be sitting in Adobe chat, listening to your translated audio on the phone. You know. And be watching... You know... Watching your transcription in StreamText. You know? It's just that it's a bit of... It does crowd your screen a little bit. I mean, basically if you're gonna do that, you've got to have a double monitor. I mean, some people will watch the transcription on their phone. They can stream text with transcription on their phone, while -- even listen on their phone while they're looking at their Adobe on their computer. Two-screen solution. You've got to be flexible.

JUDITH: Right. So that's what we have now. Going back to the other model, we are looking -- if we're gonna move, the question is -- the next question on that portfolio is... On the call captioning, is: We also have to find out what is more important. After we get the analysis of how good the captioning is, relative to the transcription, and the standards, then we look at -- we can look at also -- after that, ask people what is more important to them. Two days or one day or longer?

JOLY: In what context?

JUDITH: The transcripts.

JOLY: You mean how long it takes to arrive?

JUDITH: Right. So the question is: For users in the community, if transcripts are not available in some cases for over a week, they're not gonna be looked at again. They're only gonna be looked at as people reviewing the meeting a few days afterwards.

MIRABAI: Can I be candid about the whole rough transcript issue?

JUDITH: Yes, Mirabai, please be candid.

MIRABAI: I personally think that the practice of charging for editing and not providing rough transcripts is somewhat opposed to the best practice of captioning. I know a lot of companies do it, because they come from a court reporting situation. But personally, I feel like captioners should offer their live captions as their work product, and then just give the unedited transcript as a by product of that, without charging extra. That's my own policy.

JUDITH: I think they used to. I think we used to get that. From Caption First. But it would say rough captions. And I noticed the ones that ICANN had gotten don't say that. But they don't say they're verbatim. And they pay for the editing. But it's a small fee.

JOLY: I mean, verbatim is something that is basically... Implies an extra level of proofreading. You know. I think rough versus edited just means basically errors have been knocked out.

MIRABAI: Yeah, spellcheck, et cetera. Checking for steno untranslates. That sort of thing.

JOLY: There's three levels.

JUDITH: There's more. According to the ones that ICANN is paying, that are transcribed from the audio -- they're not saying they're verbatim either.

JOLY: No. Well, they're not.

JUDITH: But that's what ICANN is getting, and paying a lot of money. A huge amount of money.

JOLY: But the question is: How much do you actually need verbatim? For court reporting or stuff like that, or for political stuff, maybe you do need it. Because it has to be absolutely spot on. But for, like, policy development discussions... You know, well, someone might have to go back to the audio. You know, if there's something that's in doubt. It's beyond scope.

JUDITH: Right. So that's the question that we need to be posing. Is... First of all, the audio is only... The transcript is only of the audio. And the audio may have bad parts in it, that are unintelligible.

JOLY: There's a saying, which is Garbage In, Garbage Out.

JUDITH: Right. So that's the point. But exactly -- and that's another point that we're gonna be asking. We've asked. Is exactly your question. But no one wants to provide an answer, until they find out: What are the standards that they're paying for now? So if they're not paying for verbatim...

MIRABAI: The problem is that's going to vary captioner by captioner and job by job. And Caption First is going to have different captioners doing different jobs.

JOLY: They're paying basically for captions.

JUDITH: No, not the captions. The transcripts. We're talking transcripts. So they are these companies who listen to the audio files.

JOLY: Let's just hear Mirabai's comment on this.

MIRABAI: Sorry, I'm unclear. Is it Caption First that's doing the editing, or is it a separate company that's typing them up from scratch?

JOLY: Let me explain. When Caption First does the captions, they provide a thing that says... This is just rough captions. And then you pay more and wait five days for them to give you a corrected version.

MIRABAI: Right.

JUDITH: Two days. But we're talking about something else. So in addition to this, ICANN has been paying for transcripts. And so they've hired separate companies. Who listen to the audio feeds in the various languages. And do transcripts. From the audio.

MIRABAI: Not using the caption file as a starting point?

JUDITH: The transcripts from the audio are not verbatim. They don't use the word verbatim. We're trying to find out what standards they're using. And... What the quality is. And they can take upwards of two weeks or shorter, depending on who the company is. Right now, ICANN is funding transcripts of everything. We're hoping in the effort to go with captioning, we can get rid of that cost, save money, and just have captions for everything.

MIRABAI: That's smart. I think that's a good idea.

JOLY: I understand.

MIRABAI: Yep, I agree.

JOLY: Yes, she says she thinks it's a good idea.

JUDITH: Right. So the question is we need to find out what they're paying on the transcripts. What the standards are. What they are... How captioning matches up to them. And if there's a shortfall, is it worth... What do the users think. And what's more important to the user -- getting it right away, or waiting for transcripts anywhere from a week to two weeks.

MIRABAI: Right, gotcha.

JOLY: Let Mirabai speak.

MIRABAI: I think one issue with the verbatim versus non-verbatim thing might be that sometimes verbatim means things like uhhh... And well... And false starts are included. But most transcriptioners leave those out, because they're not relevant. They're only useful in very specific contexts.

JOLY: Yes, this was my -- when I first started captioning, this was my dilemma, as to style. And I had to go out and sort of read up on captioning best practices, to know whether to leave this stuff in. And I'm still kind of... A little half and half on it.

MIRABAI: By and large it's a good idea to take that stuff out. But that might be one definition of verbatim.

JUDITH: So, Joly, maybe that's why the people who are transcribing the audio feeds are not saying they're verbatim. Because they leave those out.

MIRABAI: That's my guess, yep. But probably all the relevant information is there.

JUDITH: But I want them to do a comparison. I want the secretarial staff to do a comparison, so we can really see what's the difference.

MIRABAI: That's a good idea. But it has to be qualitative and not just quantitative.

JOLY: We have Muhammad, who's just joined us. I don't know, Muhammad, if your audio and video is working, but we'd just like to say hello and welcome. And sorry that you've missed it, but hopefully I will be able to post the recording this week, as I didn't... Last.

JUDITH: And there was a guest person.

JOLY: Yeah, we don't know who that is.

MUHAMMAD: Hello? Can you hear me?

JOLY: We can hear you, Muhammad.

MUHAMMAD: I'm sorry I missed most of the talk, but it is pretty interesting. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. But it is pretty interesting that we are discussing here the captioning versus -- there are two things, what I have understood from the 10 minutes or so. We are discussing audio captioning, verbatim versus the -- what we call annotations?

JOLY: Well, closed captioners.

MUHAMMAD: So captioning, in my opinion -- yeah. Captions. So I would say verbatim -- isn't it the purpose that -- of captioning if we do the verbatim transcripts, isn't it the purpose of the captioning? Because what we want... If someone cannot play the audio or hear the...

MIRABAI: That's part of the problem. There are too many definitions of the word verbatim.

JOLY: So this is Mirabai, who's our captioner. Saying there's too many definitions of the word verbatim. So the primary purpose, as far as we're concerned, is accessibility. So that people who, for some reason, universal accessibility -- so that people who are maybe so busy that they can't listen can read the captions. So the people who maybe can't hear can read the captions. Or even, you know, people who are blind can use screen readers to, like, read the captions. And all this kind of thing. And then there's a secondary thing of having it for a kind of searchable record. Which means that also the information is much more accessible. So having a totally accurate transcription is certainly tertiary to any of those concerns.

MIRABAI: As you saw, I left out Joly saying "So... So... Um..." there, because it wouldn't increase readability. But that's sometimes what transcriptionists mean by "verbatim". Whereas I believe that the most useful definition of verbatim would be putting in all relevant words.

JOLY: So we've only got an hour booked. So I'm gonna let it go. Can I ask where you're calling from, Muhammad? Muhammad? Where are you calling from? Well...

MUHAMMAD: I'm sorry. (inaudible) on my side... Yeah. I'm calling from Pakistan. And my apologies, because the reception on my side is a little bad. So I, again, have to use the transcription part on my computer.

MIRABAI: Very glad it's helpful!

JOLY: Oh, very good. And are you with the ISOC Islamabad? I... I guess we can't have this conversation right now.

MUHAMMAD: Yeah, I am on their board.

JOLY: Very good. So... So as you know, we already had Naveed give us a complete description. I don't know if you saw that a couple weeks ago.

MUHAMMAD: I guess so. Too.

JOLY: So we are keeping up with what's going on in Pakistan. And we'd be very happy if you could come back next week or a week after and give us an update on how it's going over there.

JUDITH: Nice talking to everyone. I won't be there next week. Because I'll be at the ICANN meeting. But maybe from ICANN I can try to log in.

MUHAMMAD: Yeah, sure. I can do that. It would be definitely... My apologies for getting late today. Actually, I was aiming to join earlier, but somehow I got in some things, and could not join earlier. So... Perhaps next week we can have...

JOLY: Very good. Very good. So... We look forward to that. And I think I'm gonna shut down today. Thank you so much, Mirabai. Thank you, Fred, for being our most regular attendee. And see you all next week.

JUDITH: Yeah. I won't be there.



JOLY: Okay, Judith.