Accessibility7 July 2026

Live captions and BSL: what is actually involved

Accessibility on a live stream is usually treated as something added at the end. It works much better when it is part of the production from the start, and the difference shows.

Live captions

Two approaches, and they are not equivalent.

Automatic captions are generated by speech recognition, usually by the platform. They are free, immediate, and roughly eighty to ninety percent accurate with clear speech in a quiet room. Accuracy drops with accents, technical vocabulary, names, and anyone speaking over anyone else.

Human captioning, sometimes called live subtitling, uses a trained operator working in real time. Accuracy is much higher and it handles names, jargon and crosstalk. It costs more and needs booking in advance.

For a public meeting or an AGM where the record matters, human captioning is usually the right call. For an internal all-hands, automatic is often fine.

In-vision BSL

British Sign Language is a language, not a transcription of English. A BSL interpreter is not doing the same job as a caption operator and one does not replace the other.

Practically, in-vision BSL means the interpreter appears in the broadcast picture rather than in a separate window the viewer has to find. That requires a dedicated camera on the interpreter, a position in the room with a clean background and good lighting, and a decision about how they sit in the frame.

The usual layout is a keyed inset in a lower corner, sized large enough to actually read. Too small and it is decorative rather than useful.

Interpreters also need the material in advance. Names, acronyms and running order. An interpreter working blind on a technical presentation is being set up to struggle.

Booking notes

BSL interpreters for live work book up well ahead, particularly around peak AGM season in the autumn. Two interpreters are standard for anything over about an hour, because they swap out.

We build both captions and in-vision BSL into the production mix rather than treating them as an add-on. More on accessibility provision and on housing association AGMs.