The Covid-19 pandemic has altered our social and work lives from in-person to mostly online. Whether it’s catching up with family, meetings with co-workers, hanging out with friends, attending classes, celebrating birthdays, or even going on dates — it all happens on a screen.
With vaccinations getting widespread distribution, it’s exciting to imagine a time when we can shut our laptops and see friends, family and co-workers face to face again.
But will things revert to a pre-pandemic normal?
Most likely not — or at least not entirely. The reality is that Zooms, Google Meets, FaceTime calls and the like are here to stay as our lives and work become more hybrid. And video calls will continue to play an important role in our communication with each other.
While many choose video chatting for the added personal effect of seeing other participants’ faces, the downside of video calling platforms is that they don’t provide consistent, easily accessible real-time captions. Video calls are meant to bring people together, but the lack of instant captions excludes members of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community.
When Deaf and hard of hearing people want to hop on a video call with friends, family members, or co-workers that are hearing or do not use ASL, they need to quickly and easily get high quality captions of the other speakers. Getting accurate captions in real-time is crucial in order to participate in the call rather than being a step (or two or three) behind by slow or inconsistent captions.
Ava Closed Captions or Ava CC is Ava’s captioning solution for your computer. It makes it possible to get captions of a video call, no matter the platform. Ava designed Ava CC so that you can quickly and seamlessly take part in any online video chat, whether it’s a large group conversation or an intimate one-on-one. With one click, live captions of the audio will appear on the same screen as the call so that you can read them while continuing to see the faces of the people you are calling.
The captions are generated in real-time, which means less awkward pauses during the conversation due to delayed or unreliable captions. There’s no need to ask the other people on the call to do anything either, as you can have Ava CC set up completely independently on your computer.
Ava users love using Ava CC for captioning everything from online books clubs to parent-teacher conferences to simply video chatting with loved ones. We will always have the need for captions during video calls. And the hybrid work environment is here to stay so captions during video conferencing need to not only work well but be geared to the needs of people who are Deaf and hard of hearing, keeping them in the conversation — always.
Related Read: Post-Pandemic Hiring — How to Jump on the Train if You’re Deaf or Hard of Hearing
