The Future of Closed Captions May Look Like Podcast Karaoke [S3E7]

Jones v Gimlet (https://www.scribd.com/document/469030556/Jones-v-Gimlet#from_embed) could be a landmark case and possibly a turning point for the disability community’s long-standing struggles for acceptance in podcasting. In short, the class action lawsuit claims that Gimlet Media is violating provisions of the American’s With Disability Act by not providing closed captioning services for content the podcasting company produces.

Te future triggered if this class action suit prevails is of interest to everyone who listens to podcasts. Not just the 10 - 13% of the population with hearing loss (https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing#:~:text=One%20in%20eight%20people%20in,based%20on%20standard%20hearing%20examinations.&text=About%202%20percent%20of%20adults,adults%20aged%2055%20to%2064.) .

But let's talk about the elephant in the room: Podcasting is audio, not video. So exactly where would these closed captions for podcasts appear? In a podcast listening app, of course. Perhaps not Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or Google Podcasts. Although they might quickly follow, I think it takes someone creating a podcast listening app that is designed for people with hearing loss -- even those who are completely deaf. 

Before you get too twisted up in tech hurdles, I remind you that captions already appear on our TV screens for live sporting events, local news programs, or a national broadcast from the Rose Garden. It should be a straightforward process to replicate those same processes and technologies to work in a dedicated podcast app on your phone. 

Spoiler: https://www.loom.com/share/efd2b1428b2f49eaad347aa6df59a992 (https://www.loom.com/share/efd2b1428b2f49eaad347aa6df59a992)

With captions that dramatic pause you put in for effect in your audio delivery is effective in text. And it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out how text treatment, like bold, italics. or emoji 💩 could be used to better communicate emphasis, subtly, or tone. 

Not all podcasts require “on the fly” captioning. Some of the most popular podcasts have a months-long development cycle per episode. For those, it’s not terribly arduous to imagine the development of an “official” subtitle track as part of the post-production process. For those shows, they can layer in the text treatments I mentioned to make sure they nail the tone they were looking for. 

But why stop there?

Since someone is already designing a visual interface layered on top of the audio for consumption in a dedicated app, why not add more than just rich text and add in images and other content that both enhances the audio experience and benefits those with hearing loss?

If that reminds of you of enhanced podcasting, it should. And if you’re remembering all the times that enhanced podcasting has been re-invented and failed many, many times over, you are smart to do so.

But keep this in mind: One of the many reasons most of those attempts failed because the end-user -- the everyday podcast listener -- didn’t find the “enhanced” experience compelling enough to change their behavior. 

Unlike every other podcast app, this podcast app I’m imagining  ould be designed for a specific user base. And 10 - 13% of the population sure sounds like an addressable market to me.

Again, much of the inventing necessary to enable this has been done. Though I’m not the guy who's not going to do any of the work, it seems a straightforward process to assembling those prior inventions in a way to make closed captions for podcasts a very real thing.

Regardless of the outcome of the current lawsuit, it’s good to have this conversation. Anything we can do to make podcasts more accessible is a Very Good Thing, every rational person would agree. You don’t have to be an activist in the disability community to think so.

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