Accessible Live Streaming | Captions & BSL | dwmedia

Accessible live streaming with captions and BSL by dwmedia
Accessible Live Streaming

Captions and BSL,
built in from the start.

Not bolted on the week before. Not forgotten until someone complains.

Live captions, in-vision BSL interpretation and captioned recordings, produced as part of your stream rather than as an afterthought. For AGMs, public meetings, conferences and any event where the audience is everyone.

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Most accessibility
gets added late,
and it shows.

An interpreter squeezed into a corner of the frame at 200 pixels wide. Auto-captions that turn your chief executive’s name into something unrepeatable. A recording that sits on your website for eight months with no captions at all.

None of that happens because anyone stopped caring. It happens because accessibility was handed to the production company three days out, when the shot was already designed and the platform was already chosen.

We do it the other way round. If we know at quote stage that you need BSL or live captions, we design the frame, the layout and the delivery around it. It costs less and it works properly.

Accessible streaming for AGMs, public meetings and conferences.

dwmedia produces accessible live streams for housing associations, NHS trusts, universities, councils and membership organisations across the UK. That means live captions displayed alongside the broadcast, British Sign Language interpretation composited properly into the frame at a size people can actually read, and a captioned recording delivered afterwards so the content stays accessible for as long as it stays online.

For most organisations the driver is a mix of duty and decency. Under the Equality Act 2010 there is an obligation to make reasonable adjustments so disabled people are not put at a substantial disadvantage, and case law around live events has established that sign language access is a requirement rather than a courtesy. The British Sign Language Act 2022 goes further for government departments, placing reporting duties on the use of BSL in public communications. If you are a public body, your website and its content also sit under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations.

The fourteen day rule catches most people out

Live content is treated differently from recorded content. A stream going out in real time is not held to the same captioning standard as a video sitting on a web page. But the moment that recording stays published beyond fourteen days it stops being live content and starts being pre-recorded content, which means it needs accurate captions. Almost every AGM recording we see is still on the client’s website a year later. If it went up without captions, it has been non-compliant for eleven and a half months.

That is why we treat the captioned recording as part of the job rather than an optional extra. You get the live version accessible on the day and the archive version accessible for as long as you keep it.

We produce it. We do not pretend to interpret it.

To be straight with you: dwmedia is a live video production company, not an interpreting agency. We do not employ BSL interpreters or speech-to-text reporters in house. What we do is handle the production side properly, which is the part that usually goes wrong, and coordinate the right specialists through suppliers we have worked with before. There are only around 1,800 registered BSL interpreters in the UK, so the single biggest factor in whether your event has an interpreter is how early you ask. Raise it with us at quote stage and we will tell you honestly what is achievable for your date.

This sits alongside our live event streaming and IMAG work, and is most often booked as part of an AGM or annual meeting. dwmedia works UK-wide from a base in Northumberland.

What this covers

Three things, done
properly.

Live captions on an event stream
01
Live captions
A human speech-to-text reporter, not auto-captions. Fed into the stream or displayed on a second screen in the room. Names, acronyms and technical terms briefed in advance so they come out right.
In-vision BSL interpreter compositing
02
In-vision BSL
The interpreter shot on their own camera, lit properly and composited into the broadcast at a usable size. Not a postage stamp in the corner. We handle interpreter coordination through trusted suppliers.
Captioned recording and transcript delivery
03
Captioned recording
The archive version, captioned to standard, with a transcript. Delivered ready to publish so the recording stays compliant for as long as it stays on your site.
Accessible event production setup
How we build it in

Designed around access,
not squeezed in after.

Every one of these decisions is easier and cheaper if it is made at quote stage rather than on site.

Frame designed for the interpreter
Layout planned so BSL sits at a readable size without covering the speaker or the slides. Decided before the cameras are positioned.
Dedicated interpreter position
Own camera, own lighting, clear sightline to the speaker and to a monitor. Interpreters cannot work from the back of a dark room.
Caption feed into the broadcast
Live text integrated into the stream or delivered to a separate viewer window, depending on your platform and audience.
Terminology briefed in advance
Board member names, scheme names, acronyms and agenda items sent to the captioner before the day. This is the difference between usable captions and nonsense.
Clean audio to the captioner
A dedicated feed from the desk rather than a room mic. Speech-to-text is only as good as what it hears.
Accessible archive delivery
Captioned recording plus transcript, in the formats your web team needs, so publishing it is a five minute job.
FAQs

Common questions.

We are a production company rather than legal advisers, so take this as background and check it against your own advice. The Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable adjustments so disabled people are not put at a substantial disadvantage, and case law around live events has established that sign language access can be a requirement rather than a courtesy. If you are a public body there are additional duties, including the British Sign Language Act 2022 and the accessibility regulations covering public sector websites. In practice most organisations we work with have decided the question is not whether to provide access, but how to do it well.
Live streamed content is not held to the same captioning standard as pre-recorded content while it is going out live. But once a recording stays published beyond fourteen days it is treated as pre-recorded content, which means it needs accurate captions. Most AGM recordings stay on a website for a year or more, so if it went up uncaptioned it has been non-compliant for almost all of that time. It is much cheaper to caption it once at the point of delivery than to go back and retrofit it.
We coordinate interpreters through suppliers we have worked with, but we do not employ them directly and we will not pretend otherwise. What we handle is the production side: the dedicated camera, the lighting, the sightlines and the compositing, which is the part that most often lets the interpreter down. Be aware there are only around 1,800 registered BSL interpreters in the UK, so availability is genuinely tight. Tell us your date early and we will be straight with you about what is achievable.
For a casual internal update, sometimes. For an AGM, a public meeting or anything with resolutions, board member names and sector terminology, no. Automatic captioning struggles with proper nouns, accents, crosstalk and anything technical, which is exactly what governance meetings are made of. It also has no way of knowing that your chair is called Siobhan. For anything that matters we use a human speech-to-text reporter and brief them with your terminology in advance.
No, but it does need to be big enough to read, which is more than most people expect. The common failure is an interpreter shrunk into a corner at a size where handshapes and facial grammar are unreadable, which is worse than useless because it looks like access without being access. We design the layout at the planning stage so the interpreter, the speaker and any slides all have room. Getting that right is a framing decision, not a screen space problem.
Less than most people assume, and considerably less if you tell us early. Booked at quote stage it is an additional camera position, a caption feed and the specialist’s fee. Booked two weeks out it can mean redesigning a layout that is already signed off, rushing interpreter availability at short notice and paying a premium for both. The cost is driven by the number of specialists and the length of the event rather than by anything we add on top.
For the production side, the same lead time as any streamed event. For BSL specifically, as early as you possibly can. Interpreter availability is the constraint, not our diary, and September to November is the busiest period because that is when most AGMs land. If your annual meeting is in that window, start the conversation months out rather than weeks.
Get started

Planning an AGM or
public meeting?

Tell us the date and what access you need. We will tell you honestly what is achievable and what it will cost.

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