Livestreamed and virtual events have taken centre stage over the last year, and the industry doesn’t show signs of slowing down. AccessLOOP has been created with the deaf community, captioning users, and event producers in mind, by providing an easy-to-use tool that adds accessibility to live events. 

There are 11 million people in the UK who are deaf or hard of hearing, with an estimated 7.6 million people in the UK using subtitles on TV. While there are options to add captioning to some media channels and outlets, accessibility falls short within the virtual events and livestreaming space. 

As well as deaf people using captioning, there is a great deal of ‘hidden users’ that use the service also as it supports them engaging and accessing content. They include people with English as a second language, those with neurodiversity, older people, and those in noisy environments. Most of these hidden users won’t request captioning, but adding them may be the decider as to whether they watch the content. Captions make content accessible to not only the deaf community but also to the wider audience.

AccessLOOP is a browser-based software (no download required), which has been developed by industry experts, to support sign language interpreting and live captioning usage at virtual events. It can easily be linked to your source stream and stream destinations, including YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn, by integrating completely with existing production tools for a streamlined workflow.

Once everything is set up, the host can invite sign language interpreters and live captioners to the platform and use the built-in chat feature to communicate with other interpreters, captioners and team members. For event producers needing to translate captions, AccessLOOP also has an option to translate English captions into any language. The platform will overlay the translated captions and send them to a specified destination, allowing for the same live event to be streamed in multiple languages. 

Orla Pearson, co-founder of AccessLOOP comments, “My co-founders and I have worked in large corporations throughout our careers and have helped to implement accessible technology to provide a more inclusive user experience. We found that accessibility in live events was really lacking in options, with most platforms using AI generated captions which just don’t cut it in terms of quality and accuracy. We created AccessLOOP so that everything is in one place, with the added function to use sign language interpreters and live captioners - both options that we believe provide a better-quality live event for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. By creating an accessible livestream you’re opening up the experience to a potential 11 million people in the UK alone.”