Graham Sutherland / Polynomialonce again pissed off at censoring / sanitising language in subtitles. it's infantilising. I use subtitles all the time because of tinnitus and auditory processing issues, and I'll be damned if I want a bunch of handwringing prudish cunts fucking about with the language. censor ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in accessibility tools. I promise we're grown up enough to handle some swears and sex words, for shit's sake.
Zloanand this goes for even the most heinous of words. if someone uses an incendiary racial slur, you better fucking believe that I want to know what they said so I can tell them to fuck off. DO. NOT. CENSOR. ACCESSIBILITY. TOOLS.
of course my sweariest rant is the one that does numbers.
I don't have a soundcloud to promote but uh, idk, take a look at my silly warning stickers or something? (link in profile)
but more than anything please push for better accessibility features if you work in tech, preferably with input from actual disabled folks. it's such an afterthought usually and it's sad.
(I will probably end up muting this because my phone battery is getting absolutely munted by the notification push traffic)
David Cohen@gsuberland Maybe AI can take the swears out of your posts automatically?
😉
gadgetoid@gsuberland enjoy your fucking limelight! 🤣 it’s a worthy goddamn cause and as I subtitle user myself I appreciate the sentiment!
Can I also add “make the fucking subtitles match the fucking words spoken, I am hard of hearing and have auditory processing issues and if they don’t match I simply have to turn it off 😭”
Rick@gsuberland While they’re at it, get rid of bleeps, too.
Wayne Werner@JetForMe @gsuberland my favorite of all time: assho*e
Shaun McDonald@JetForMe @gsuberland the beeps at least block the swearing for everyone, and is appropriate if there are younger children likely to be watching. It's why on broadcast TV it's a requirement before 9pm watershed (in the UK - not sure about elsewhere).
Kim@smsm1 @JetForMe @gsuberland I dunno, sometimes they forget to censor the subtitles when adding beeps, which is a nice little easter egg...
Morgan ⚧️@JetForMe @gsuberland that's a different issue entirely. I agree the bleeps are annoying, but they're generally used in situations where not everyone listening is down to hear those words--they don't want to get sued by parents or something. But they're censoring it for everyone equally.
When there is no bleep, and it's fully said out loud uncensored, but they censor it in the subtitles, that's saying it's fine for abled people to hear it but it's too much for our wittle disabled eyes to see! 🙈
When there is no bleep, and it's fully said out loud uncensored, but they censor it in the subtitles, that's saying it's fine for abled people to hear it but it's too much for our wittle disabled eyes to see! 🙈
wizardry variants lori@JetForMe @gsuberland I always loved when they'd bleep the "god" in "goddammit", like is that the part that makes it dirty then or
แอท-ทริด@gsuberland hearty agree. however consider: i've always assumed it's to mitigate offensive misrecognition in delicate situations.
@astrid that assumption comes with another assumption: that deaf / hard of hearing folks aren't already fully aware of the limitations of the technology.
@astrid and honestly deaf folks probably grok the limitations and error modes of the tech way better than most of the devs, given that they use it all day every day.
Izzy@gsuberland And those of us who can hear but still need subtitles can do the actual subtitling better than the professionals in, like, basically every case. Always I am aghast that they committed such a crude error; can they not hear what's being said?? Pisses me off.
ScreechingBagel@gsuberland absolutely, accessibility means access to the exact true content as anyone able
slightly related is the annoying baked-in automated or modified WRONG subtitles prevalent in short-form content; either have it be done correctly or leave it to external automatic CC
slightly related is the annoying baked-in automated or modified WRONG subtitles prevalent in short-form content; either have it be done correctly or leave it to external automatic CC
@bagel oh yeah ffs if you're gonna do your own subs at least have the decency to do it right!
I ended up working on my own forced alignment tooling for this exact reason. the regular stuff just wasn't cutting it.
Neal Jennings@gsuberland I've seen this a lot on YouTube when people put captions in the image of the video rather than in the CC function. I *think* they're trying to get around automated filters from the sites which pick up text in the video but not audio? It's not an excuse - I agree with you on this - but I wonder if creators are doing the wrong thing to avoid being demonetized by a broken system.
Paul Armstrong@nealjennings @gsuberland I think the most obvious of these is when we see something along the lines of:
Person speaking: "...they committed suicide..."
Subtitles: "... they unlived themselves..."
It's bizarre and so obviously a workaround for broken censorship tools. :-/
Gary Parker@gsuberland we had a big problem with that at our org when using Teams for many valid research subjects.
You have to jump through some hoops to disable it, but it's possible. Part of the problem is that MS makes very little distinction between under-18 and post-18 education, and applies stuff you might consider appropriate for school children to HE.
@gsuberland if you're an education user they literally treat you like a 5yo
@witewulf funnily enough the thing that prompted this rant was MS Teams censoring words in automatic captions
@gsuberland yes, I know, I've been following that thread with some amusement, as I'm no longer responsible for Teams here (thank $deity)
@gsuberland even beyond accessibility tools I get so mad when like NEWS ARTICLES will censor slurs when the entire story is about some famous person saying a slur, or they'll just say "a homophobic slur", like...I do in fact want to know what the piece of shit in question said! It kinda matters!