We are proud that Ai-Media has the best captioners and respeakers in the industry. Today, we look into the world of William English, our very own live-captioner. How his work is seen by millions across national live-broadcast and silently yet powerfully, shaping todays accessibility.

Who is William English?

William English is a captioner/respeaker and has two years worth of solid experience under his belt with Ai-Media.

Why did you become a captioner?

After graduating from the University of Wollongong with a Bachelor of Creative Writing, I was looking for any kind of work in which I could make use of the language and editing skills I had learned as a core component of my degree. A friend of mine worked as a trainer with the company and I leapt at the chance to work for Ai-Media.

What are your biggest challenges as a captioner?

The main challenge I face as a captioner is working with - and processing - such a high volume of information in real time, which I may not have encountered before. Being a captioner means being on your toes! I know very little about mechanical engineering, but if I’m captioning a university lecture for a mechanical engineering student, I need to keep up with the course materials, for the sake of the student, who naturally relies on my captions being word accurate.

Similarly, if I’m captioning a news bulletin that goes live-to-air, I need to be ready at all times for breaking stories about parts of the country I may never have visited, or public figures I may know nothing about. It’s all part of the fun!

Is captioning playing a crucial part in shaping the accessibility of information?

Absolutely. One of the other challenges of being a captioner, however, is a lack of feedback. Because we send captions to air from a remote workstation, we very rarely know anything about the people on the other end of the television who are reading them, or the students who have their classes captioned in real-time.

I’m very fortunate, however, to know people personally who use the captions I create. One of my Auslan (Australian Sign Language) teachers, the fabulous Daniela Fin, related a story to the class about what it was like to grow up as a deaf person before the advent of many of the technologies that make life easier for deaf or hard-of-hearing people today. It was an incredibly gratifying and humbling experience for me to learn of the very significant impact my work has had on people’s lives.

Additionally, my grandfather has lost almost all of his hearing due to old age, and upon learning of my work as a captioner, began to watch some of his favourite TV shows with closed captions turned on, which I’m told he had very rarely done before. His curiosity about my work has led him to enjoy television all the more now, for the captions being turned on, and for me that’s a great source of pride.

What do you like about being a captioner?

I love what it does for people. I go to work every single day happy in the knowledge that what I do has a real, tangible effect on people’s lives. Many people use captions, and not just the deaf or hard-of-hearing - they can be invaluable for people who don’t speak English as their first language, too.

What type of TV shows or programs you love captioning the most?

I love captioning news bulletins, because they’re live-to-air, and that’s an exciting and challenging work environment! But give me a good documentary, any day! One of the greatest advantages of this line of work is that I learn something new every day. I’m the guy you want on your next trivia team!

Big thank you to William English for sharing his anecdotal experience with us in this interview.