Survey explores attitudes on captioning, automatic speech recognition

A new survey on automatic speech recognition (ASR) and captioning trends notes that two-thirds of businesses polled say they’re captioning at least half of their audio and video content.

“Navigating Automatic Speech Recognition” surveyed 200 business leaders across a variety of industries in the US, UK and Canada who incorporate ASR tools and captioning in their work. It explores current attitudes on captioning and ASR technologies, uncovers opportunities for improvement and identifies barriers that prevent companies from increasing their ASR usage.

The survey notes that company leaders understand the importance and benefits of captioning and transcribing their content and experiences, with more than half of respondents indicating that they caption 50-75% of their content, while 12% caption 75-99% of their content.

“These figures indicate that businesses not yet leveraging ASR and captioning technology (or not using it enough) should prioritize it to remain competitive,” the survey says. “As audiences and employees are exposed to captioning at greater frequency, they increasingly have come to expect it to be offered.”

The survey also examines the amount of content being captioned, the most common use cases of ASR and captioning tools, expectations for captioning use and investment in the coming year, the use of generative AI, and opinions on free, built-in ASR tools.

Highlights include:

• A greater need for improved accuracy in ASR tools. Nearly 50% of companies say they are dissatisfied with the accuracy of their current ASR technologies. This, coupled with the finding that 70% of companies are using free, built-in tools, suggests that a significant proportion of ASR technologies aren’t cutting it, and underscores the need for adopting more advanced ASR solutions that provide increased accuracy.
• ASR beyond accessibility. Companies are using ASR and other captioning tools for a wide range of business applications, demonstrating the versatility and usefulness of the technology. The most popular uses include reaching greater audiences, supporting internal company needs and creating transcripts.
• Continued interest and investment. Nearly all respondents expect their investment in captioning and ASR tools to remain steady or increase in the coming year, with the majority expressing an interest in exploring complementary generative AI technology to stay competitive.