Imagine scrolling through Instagram and seeing video posts about the demonstrations for racial justice from all over the world — but not fully understanding them.
That’s the reality for many hard-of-hearing people when they go on the app.
But Instagram pages like @transcribe.this, @ProtestAccess and @AccessActivism are trying to fill the void. Their authors are manually transcribing videos, with a focus on Black Lives Matter content, so the hard-of-hearing and deaf community can participate.
It all started with a Zoom call “about how the lack of access, and how the news was making it really hard, for deaf and hard-of-hearing people to get the information they needed — on top of the fact that everybody's wearing face masks,” according to Jessi Lawrence, who runs @transcribe.this.
Lawrence lives in Arizona and works for a live telephone transcription service. She is organizing the page in her free time. It is less than two weeks old and has about 1,500 followers and 86 posts, with everything from footage of George Floyd speaking to popular social videos and news coverage.
“We're a Band-Aid,” Lawrence said. “I'm glad that we're able to provide this, but it feels like so many people have been neglected in such a big way.”
A spokesperson for Instagram says the company is looking into what captions might look like, but at this time no new updates around captions are available. She did point to Instagram’s work on making the platform easier to use for people with visual impairment.
“We’re introducing custom alternative text so you can add a richer description of your photos when you upload a photo,” the company stated in a release. “People using screen readers will be able to hear this description.”
Lawrence has a disability and, as a white woman, says this is how she can be part of the movement to better life for Black people.
“Some of us can't be out there especially with COVID-19 happening and being immunocompromised,” she said. “This was the way that I saw that I could give back.”
In less than two weeks, 13 others have joined Lawrence in transcribing videos and 50 others from across the country have reached out to help. They now use a content management system and get requests daily for new transcriptions.
View this post on Instagram
Black Police officer’s standpoint on George Floyd — — — [Transcript] Let’s talk things that happened in Minneapolis, cop standpoint right? I am disgusted with the things that happened in Minneapolis, pure point blank, things could’ve went way different. At the end of the day, let’s talk facts. Guy is on the ground, he’s landing on his stomach, he has handcuffs on. It’s four of y’all, one of him. Four of y’all, one of him. Who has control of the situation? There’s not much one person could do against four people. Now let’s get deeper, right? As an officer, you are first responder, right? So if in the midst of you trying to gain compliance, someone is hurt, you have to render aid. So somebody saying “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe”, you don’t think to yourself and say “Oh my god, this guy can’t breathe. He might die. Let me render aid.” right? Another point. Officers. Other officers. If you’re going to be- are officers going to stand there and not help- and not help when things go wrong? Cmon, like you don’t see that? That’s the reason why I got behind this badge, right? Because I want- the officers that are afraid to step up, I want to be the one to step up. If I see wrong happening, wrong is not happening in my presence, right? I’m going to check it. And that’s period.
A post shared by Transcribe This (@transcribe.this) on Jun 4, 2020 at 11:35pm PDT
As a deaf person, Topher González Ávila from Dallas says finding @transcribe.this made him feel included in the Instagram conversation.
“It is crucial, more than ever, to have access to accurate information and to make informed decisions,” he said. “@transcribe.this has been doing a phenomenal job in bringing access, but they can only do so much.”
Jordan Lopez, an American Sign Language interpreter from Sacramento, reached out to Lawrence early on.
“I've been out protesting, but when I'm at home there's time to do something to give back,” he said. “When I saw Jessi’s post floating around … I was like this is something I can do.”
He helped caption a video of George Floyd talking. “We’ve seen pictures of George Floyd, we hear his name all the time, but this video was one of the only videos I think I've seen so far of him, which really humanized him,” Lopez said.
Floyd, 46, was killed by police officers in Minnesota on March 25 and his death resulted in protests across the globe. He spent part of his life in North Carolina, and the interpreters doing the translation had a difficult time understanding some of his speech. They reached out to linguists with a familiarity with the state’s accents to help.
“They were able to fill in the gaps of parts where we weren't able to,” Lopez said. “If that's a humanizing process for us to see George Floyd on video speaking to the camera, that same impact needs to happen with the deaf community.”
He says companies like Instagram, run by Facebook, should include captions and that may mean a need to update the American with Disabilities Act.
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