With technical project needs and tight deadlines, I know how much of a relief it is to find a reliable, dependable captioning service. We share your passion in delivering the project and will work to ensure your project is a success.

– Andrew Dodson (Transcript Divas Owner).

Same Day / Next Day / Weekend

Timelines to fit into your project timeline. We realise that video and film production crews must juggle changing timelines and schedules. Problems arise, new project parameters are created, and fires start. We realise not all of this is 9-5, weekdays only. Some of it is ‘after hours’, Saturday and Sunday. We will work with you to hit the timelines you need.

200% Guarantee on Timelines and Accuracy. Right the first time.

We realise that being able to stick to the plan is paramount. We guarantee that we will complete your project on time. If you need a project turned around sooner (or later), please just call or live chat with us – we can usually move around our workload to make it happen. We know keeping to the schedule is essential. There are large crews, expensive gear and client expectations to manage. We always deliver on time.

Australian Caption Standards

The Australian Human Rights Commission Guidelines set the law around accessibility in Australia. Similar to detailing the need to provide wheelchair access to premises for those with physical disabilities, the guidelines also set out the need to provide captions to video media for those with hearing or other communication-related disabilities.

To be useable, captions need to be at a certain standard. Similar to the standards set for wheelchair-accessible doorways, captions need to follow a set of standards to be useful as well. Spelling and word accuracy are of prime importance, but also factors such as how many words on the screen appear at the same time, whether it is clear who said what in a group shot, do the captions cover on-screen graphics, all add up to captioned media that can actually be useful and not just, confusing.

Australia follows the industry standard in captioning – the WCAG caption standard. Like other accessibility standards, this standard applies to Australian government agencies and departments, Australian registered businesses, and non-government organisations. What does that mean? It means captions need to follow a specific set of caption rules, see WCAG Rules, in order to be accessible (and therefore compliant).

To be accessible – and compliant – captions need to be accurate against the dialogue and clearly identify who is speaking and include non-speech information conveyed through sound, including meaningful sound effects. Fitting all this information into the ‘shot’ to keep the captions in time with the video is a specialist task using specialist video software. This isn’t about turning on YouTube auto-captions and hoping AI will magically sort it out.

What do compliant captions look like? For a start, it is not auto-captions. The FCC provides a clear definition of captions and the WCAG.

• Equal meaning and intention. The original material is conveyed in its entirety (core principle).
• Complete representation of the entire audio, including speaker identification, speech and non-speech.
• Readable with time to be read completely, are in synchronization with the audio, and are not obscured by (nor do they obscure) the visual content.
• Accurate captions are the goal for each production.
• Consistent style and presentation.