Hearing Loss: Come introduce yourself and connect with others

@julieo4, while you're on the subject of Zoom captions, I thought I'd add some information. There is an upcoming Zoom webinar titled "Ask Me Anything with Eric Yuan" on Aug 19. Eric is the CEO of Zoom so it should be interesting. You can find information about Zoom webinars here: https://zoom.us/events. I've registered for the event and in the confirmation that I received back, questions can be asked in advance. I responded with the following message and hope that these questions get answered:
I will be participating in the "Ask Me Anything" webinar on Aug 19.  In case I don't get a chance to ask these questions, I'll let you know now.
1) What is the status of automatic captions?  I watched a Zoom training webinar that used the captions and was impressed with the speed and accuracy.

2) When captions are available, will they be free?

3) Currently, if the chat box is not displayed and captions are available, the incoming chat messages overwrite the captions.  Can chat messages be moved to not interfere with captions?

Thank you

I look forward to hearing more about what you learn Tony. I participated in that Zoom training that used the captions. They were great. Not sure why Zoom is holding off on including captions in their format while others like Google Meet are already providing them. We experimented with GM prior to purchasing the Zoom pro program for our HLAA chapter. We found the visuals were inferior to Zoom. For example, you cannot see yourself, except for a tiny postage stamp sized visual. What happened was that people don't realize they are not being seen as they should be. People slump in their chair and you only see the top of their head, etc. Regardless, Zoom should get on the bandwagon. FYI, we have had our online meetings captioned by a CART provider. It is tricky to get those captions in the right place as they tend to cover other things on the screen. It gets more complicated with 'share screen' when a power point is being used. I have found that by experimenting with some of the controls; gallery view, vs speaker view, for example, I can move things around. It's really important to encourage Zoom neophytes to experiment with those controls. It's the only way to learn how they work.

Hi -- I'm Lucky1038 in Santa Monica CA. I am really O.L.D. I think my hearing is OK but I want to get it tested. I've seen my regular doctor for about 20 years. She has never brought up the subject of hearing. So thanks to you here on the internet I'm motivated to get it checked out. Also my good friend has had hearing loss.. he's 90. he's been wearing some kind of a hearing aid. But he's not one to research things. I introduced him to computers when all one saw when turning it on was an amber screen -- you had to type something to load an application. Later on I dragged him into getting a new PC.. and forced him to use email. He loves it. The problem now is that his hearing is worse. I want to find out about tools to make it so that he can use his computer including his email easier.

@julieo4 I will update this group after the webinar. I hope the questions get answered. Like you, I experimented with Google Meet for our state association before deciding on Zoom. At that time, Google only displayed a maximum of 4 participants, I believe. I think they've since updated so that 16 can be seen. I have a large computer screen and with Zoom, I can see up to 25 people at once. When we tested Google Meet for the automatic captions, the captions were fine for the folks that have good speech. We pulled in a board member that does not have good speech and the captions failed miserably. Automatic captions are not reliable for those voices. We, too, pay for captions when we have our board meetings and have also decided that we need paid captions for Executive Committee meetings because the member with a challenging voice is our treasurer. I don't know if automatic captions will ever be good enough for challenging voices and heavy accents, but you never know. Who would have thought we would be where we are today with automatic captions? I'm guessing that the challenging voices is why Zoom is holding off on their captions. They don't want to settle for "good enough".
Tony in Michigan

Thanks Tony. Keep us posted on what you learn. The challenging voice issue is something many people don't understand. It happens as a result of poor hearing over many years. It's often referred to as 'deaf speech'. That is not an insult to deaf people, but it's a reality. When you lose hearing, or never had good hearing from birth or early childhood, you are not aware of certain sounds. Speech therapy can help with children, but it takes a huge effort. When we lose hearing, it's generally in the high frequencies, generally the consonant sounds (all sounds other than vowels). Consonants basically define words. Vowels don't, but they give speech power. Here's the difference: _u_ _ _ e (Vowels) vs p_rpl_ (consonants) Here's another one: _o_o_ _y_ _e. (y can be a vowel.) That's a 4 syllable word. vroom vroom is a hint. Now if I give you the vowels you can probably figure it out. m_t_r c_cl_ Reality is, when you don't hear sounds like s, th, f, n, m, c, etc. you tend to omit them from speech and your speech gets distorted.There are lots more of those soft sounds, but you get the idea. Deaf speech also tends to be nasal, which makes it even harder to understand. And, for those of us with adult onset hearing loss it's a huge barrier. We have to circumvent that barrier as best we can if we associate with other people with hearing loss. A good CART provider can usually translate it pretty well. Crossing my fingers that Zoom will get the message about captioning. CART is wonderful, but it's expensive to provide.

We had a previous discussion about Zoom captions. I just watched the "Ask Me Anything with Eric Yuan" presentation. The focus was to give an update on the security features and Zoom home - which integrates Zoom into Amazon Alexa and Google Assistance products. There was a strong focus on Zoom with the education sector because many classes are virtual. I, and others, asked the question about when the auto captions will be available. The answer was that it will be released in chunks, starting with those in education. My guess is that if you have a paid Zoom account, you'll get it before the free accounts. I didn't get an answer on why release to the whole community instead of the education sector but that was not answered. My guess is that the captions require bandwidth and may cause headaches for those that do not use captions??? Today's meeting used the automatic captions and they were pretty good since several of the speakers had challenging voices, including the CEO.
Tony in Michigan

We had a previous discussion about Zoom captions. I just watched the "Ask Me Anything with Eric Yuan" presentation. The focus was to give an update on the security features and Zoom home - which integrates Zoom into Amazon Alexa and Google Assistance products. There was a strong focus on Zoom with the education sector because many classes are virtual. I, and others, asked the question about when the auto captions will be available. The answer was that it will be released in chunks, starting with those in education. My guess is that if you have a paid Zoom account, you'll get it before the free accounts. I didn't get an answer on why release to the whole community instead of the education sector but that was not answered. My guess is that the captions require bandwidth and may cause headaches for those that do not use captions??? Today's meeting used the automatic captions and they were pretty good since several of the speakers had challenging voices, including the CEO.
Tony in Michigan

We had a previous discussion about Zoom captions. I just watched the "Ask Me Anything with Eric Yuan" presentation. The focus was to give an update on the security features and Zoom home - which integrates Zoom into Amazon Alexa and Google Assistance products. There was a strong focus on Zoom with the education sector because many classes are virtual. I, and others, asked the question about when the auto captions will be available. The answer was that it will be released in chunks, starting with those in education. My guess is that if you have a paid Zoom account, you'll get it before the free accounts. I didn't get an answer on why release to the whole community instead of the education sector but that was not answered. My guess is that the captions require bandwidth and may cause headaches for those that do not use captions??? Today's meeting used the automatic captions and they were pretty good since several of the speakers had challenging voices, including the CEO.
Tony in Michigan

@davekoh, I can't speak for all phones, but you should be able to buy an external mic for your phone. It may improve the transcriptions. The mic will make it more convenient to allow you to read the transcript while you position the mic as close to the speaker as possible. If the mic is more than about 8 inches from the speakers mouth, it may not help much. You may want to purchase the mic from a place that has a good return policy in the event the expectations are not met.
Tony in Michigan