More Than a Distraction

I attend remote meetings regularly. I have to take various actions to hear people better. Sometimes I have to ask them to turn on webcams, get closer to their microphones, and ask for the auto-captions to be turned on. Remote-meeting platforms often provide auto-captioning for people with hearing loss (and others who are having trouble following what is being said).

Unfortunately, in some cases, the captioning on the remote platforms is so mistake-ridden that I just turn them off. Even when there are relatively few mistakes, the distractions they can cause really interfere with my ability to keep up with the conversation.

Imagine a speaker who says the words, “site administrator,” and the captions read “satan administrator.” Even if the captioning software corrects it, the distraction created by the error, and the visual motion of the correction, can really impact my ability to follow the conversation.