dialect and idiom;
5. vocabulary complexity;
6. position on screen;
7. kind of background to provide;
8. how many words/subtitle;
9. how far can speech be edited without loss of information;
10. do sports commentaries require a different approach; and
11. how to deal with offstage voices and noises.
Examining the different ways subtitles were produced led to Lambourne developing NEW-FOR (New FORmatter—marketed by VG Electronics, Hastings, Sussex). This was an input console serving as a front end to existing subtitling systems. It provided automatic formatting (using syntax analysis to highlight significant markers such as phrase, clause, or sentence ends), and the use of geometric shape analysis for line division, insertion of colour (to denote speakers), positioning of subtitles on the screen, and calculations of on-air display time. Abbreviation expansion was also offered. After being shown preliminary results of this research, the Broadcasters funded further development. NEWFOR reduced the time to produce subtitles from 27.5 hours/per programme hour to 15 hours.
The most important aspects of this research were the multi-disciplinary approach of detailed research into the requirements of deaf viewers and the analysis of the captioning process. We believed that these had not previously been done, and they led to an effective and efficient system. Some 30 years later, the original research student Andrew Lambourne continues to market subtitling systems. This provides yet another example both of the potential client not supporting the work in its early stages, and the advantage of researchers moving from academia to industry to facilitate the technology transfer.
In the 1970s, broadcasters had said they could not afford to subtitle programmes, but by 2008 100% of B.B.C’s output was subtitled (although this was not the case in some other UK broadcasters’ output). The importance of subtitling is underlined by the BBC having more complaints about the audibility of speech than anything else. Particularly for older people, it is often a combination of hearing impairment and the cognitive capacity to understand heavy accents and/or poor diction, which produces the problem. In this case, subtitles can provide a more effective solution than “clear audio” or reducing other sounds in the audio output. Subtitled television has also been found to be very popular in public houses and other noisy environments. This is another example of a system designed for a disabled group providing a service for non-disabled people (see Chapter 10).
CHAPTER 4
Word Prediction for Non-Speaking People and Systems for those with Dyslexia
A major design challenge for the developers of communication system for non-speaking people was to increase the rate at which non-speaking people could “talk” via these systems. PAL, the predictive adaptive lexicon, showed how this could be achieved by word prediction. This system was found to provide a writing aid for people with dyslexia, and led to the development of other software for this group of people. An alternative word prediction system was reproduced many years later as a ubiquitous mobile phone application.
4.1 SUPPORT FOR NON-SPEAKING PEOPLE
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