Customer story
YuJa
YuJa is enhancing video accessibility for US and European organizations by partnering with Verbit for accurate captioning at scale.
In a Nutshell
Ed-tech software platform YuJa supports video management, recording and editing for customers across the United States and Europe. YuJa knows that accessibility is non-negotiable when it comes to video content for students and all members of higher education communities.
“No longer can you deploy video at scale and not think about the accessibility of that video,” said Nathan Arora, Chief Business Officer, YuJa. “With today’s legislations, accessibility is not a nice-to-have; it’s a have-to-have.”
Partnering with Verbit allows YuJa to provide accurate captioning to meet the standards of the law at scale for diverse customers.
The Challenge
YuJa needed a captioning solution that could handle tens of thousands of videos for its more than 600 enterprise clients, including leading higher education institutions like Princeton and Stanford.
“As a result of our large clientele, our large demographics, we have users needing captioning support in different dialects, different languages, and then all different types of recording environments,” said Kline Boudreau, Director of Solutions Engineering, YuJa.
While making content accessible is a legal requirement, YuJa’s solutions must also be cost-effective so institutions can provide this service at scale. However, offering the necessary accuracy isn’t always possible with fully automated captioning tools — especially when YuJa’s customers are captioning videos recorded in various conditions with people speaking multiple languages.
“We're not talking about one, two videos; we're talking about tens of thousands of videos that need to be captioned within specific SLAs, and so one of the things that very much attracted us to Verbit is that they were able to deliver that quality and that scale.”
The Solution
YuJa turned to Verbit for a solution that leverages artificial intelligence but combines that technology with human oversight to provide accurate results at lower costs. With Verbit’s proprietary automatic speech recognition (ASR), YuJa noticed better results, even when they expanded to Europe, where diverse dialects had caused setbacks for previous providers. From day one, Verbit made it easy to offer captions that met the high expectations of YuJa’s many customers.
The Results
- Quick, easy captioning
“Our customers expect our products to be delivered in a predictable, reliable instruction manner, and so we look to partners like Verbit to provide that high-quality auto-captioning. Users on the platform can just send a request that takes two clicks, and then within a very quick period of time, they have captions on their video.”
- Ability to accommodate language variations
“One of the challenges was our expansion in Europe, particularly with Canterbury Christ Church University. The previous caption vendor didn’t accurately caption the different dialects and different accents, so they really needed a difference and a change. That’s when Verbit came in, and pretty much overnight since we made the switch, they were definitely seeing a change and a better return.”
- Lower costs without sacrificing accuracy
“When we look at Verbit’s unique combination of AI and human, what it means is that you can deploy captions that are at the quality of a human-based captioning, but you’re able to lower the permanent cost because, in the places that you can, you’re leveraging artificial intelligence, and so our customers appreciate that because, at the end of the day, it means that they get high-quality captioning but at a lower price point.”
“Our product benefits from the very positive work that Verbit does. We were to deploy within one release cycle into the field, we had no issues in the field from day one; it worked, our customers liked it and that's really when we think of a trusted partner. It means that we can quickly take what the partner built and then deliver it to our customers and just see positive reception after that.”
About YuJa
YuJa stands at the forefront of educational technology with comprehensive platforms that allow organizations of varying sizes to educate, engage, inspire, and collaborate effectively. The company serves diverse enterprises across higher education, K-12, government, healthcare, non-profit and corporate sectors.