Suggestions Request for How to add Captions to Sacrament Meeting Webcast for Deaf/Hearing Impaired Members

Does any have any suggestions on what guidance or services are allowed or have been used to provide either live CART Captions/Subtitles to a zoom streamed Sacrament Meeting? Are we authorized to pay for the service of a Live Transcriber (pro) or either ASR (Automated Speech Recognition) or Computer Generated Captions?

I know how to get the audio from the chapel into the stream, but even that is difficult for some of our members and myself (as a hearing impaired member and IT Specialist for Assisted Listening).

Any and all recommendations are welcome. Any anything regarding simultaneous Spanish or other language streams - for conferences....

Does the church still have the captioning service via WiFi that I read about a while back? It was a WiFi connection members could connect to and see what was being said if they don’t know ASL.

Thanks to all who have been helping during these difficult times. It is very much appreciated.

David A.

ddatchi wrote:Are we authorized to pay for the service of a Live Transcriber (pro) or either ASR (Automated Speech Recognition) or Computer Generated Captions?

That's a question that probably best asked by the stake president to the area authority. I've seen nothing on the issue.

As for trying to accommodate multiple languages, I think the best plan is to use multiple streams. I'm not aware of any method where you can send multiple audio tracks for one video stream and create separate products.

You can try out the Google Live Caption service. We have a deaf member in our ward and a year or two ago someone in the ward tried out Google Live Caption. I don't remember how well it worked, but it's a free option. There are other paid live caption services. If you figure out what works, then you have to figure out how to get the output to your stream.

As asked in a similar thread, how were these members accommodated in-person before? I'm not aware of anyone "Close Captioning" live meetings.

If it was with ASL, then you'll probably need a second stream with a ASL signer. If it was with an Assisted Listening Receiver, then you need to make sure you're getting clear audio into the stream - such as by connecting to the chapel sound system. It would then be up to the member to get that audio in a way that works for them.

Regarding multiple languages - we have started doing stake firesides that we need to broadcast in both English and Spanish. We schedule two broadcasts at the same time - one is English and one is Spanish.

The English broadcast uses our teradek like normal, but for the Spanish we take the video and audio feed and put it into a computer where we use OBS Studio software to mix in the Spanish Translation track (we have a translating standing by to do live translation) and we mix the English vs Spanish for songs vs talks and prayers.

We then use OBS to send the Special Language Mix out to the Spanish Event on the Church Webcast.

You could probably use a similar idea if you had a fast typing standing by to inject real-time subtitles over what was being said, I would just do it as a separate stream because the subtitles could be distracting for others.

Another idea is that you could do it like BYU does and have someone doing sign language and put them in as a picture in picture using OBS Software on a separate stream as well.

Web Captioner is a web-based speech recognition tool that displays a real-time transcription in your browser. It’s free and works with a microphone and any system running Google Chrome.

Since we use OBS as our encoder, we can patch Web Captioner's results right into OBS which sends them on to Youtube for us.

We have customized a few words so when it hears "steak" it types out "Stake"

The users which wish to see the captions just click "CC" in YouTube's player to turn them on.


By the way, YouTube will automatically generate captions for uploaded videos (in English here) and after a day or so generates captions on livestreamed videos that are left online.

Please help me find an
asl Ward in Boise ID area.

marycarolross wrote: Sun Feb 23, 2025 2:15 pm Please help me find an
asl Ward in Boise ID area.

Meetinghouse Locator in the 3x3-dot menu or https://maps.churchofjesuschrist.org/?lang=eng

Hmmmm, nothing is showing there. If ASL units are listed in the CDOL, your ward clerk or bishop might be able to help you find one.

I'd suggest checking with the bishops or deaf resources in the area.

A look at CDOL suggests there are no ASL language wards or branches in the US like there are for other languages. But I do know of ASL groups in wards, as there's one in my stake. But looking at that ward's information, there's no indication that they have an ASL group.

It's a long-standing issue about the lack of visibility of groups. There's a Chinese group in my ward, and there's no resources for anyone to find it.

I found several sign language units in the USA in CDOL. It's interesting that sign language is not a choice on the meetinghouse locator, even though it's a language for units.

There is one in Idaho, but it's in Idaho Falls...quite a commute from Boise, but not impossible.

Snake River Branch
5366 E 1st St
Idaho Falls, Idaho 83401
Meeting time is 1:15, Sacrament at 2:15

If you go to Meetinghouse Locator, type in Snake River Branch and it's one of the options. I recommend getting in touch with the branch leadership before attempting to visit. You should be able to contact the branch leaders via the Send a Message link. If you do not receive a response from them, then your current bishop or ward clerk can look up the leader's contact info in CDOL.

It's a brand new unit that was created in December 2024, so it may not even be well known in the Idaho Falls area. They would probably appreciate knowing of someone in Boise, even if you can't participate very often.

mevans wrote: Sun Feb 23, 2025 6:59 pm I found several sign language units in the USA in CDOL.

What did you use for a search term? I got some results, but no wards or branches. Mostly seminary or institute.

russellhltn wrote: Sun Feb 23, 2025 7:34 pm

mevans wrote: Sun Feb 23, 2025 6:59 pm I found several sign language units in the USA in CDOL.

What did you use for a search term? I got some results, but no wards or branches. Mostly seminary or institute.

Just search for "Sign Language" - "American Sign Language" doesn't yield any results. There's a deaf branch in our area. I looked them up and noticed that the term "Sign Language" was used in the unit title and just searched for that. But if you look at the unit language in CDOL, it says "American Sign Language." There is one Sign Language branch outside of the United States - in Korea. That one just lists Korean as the language in CDOL, but has "Sign Language" in the title.

Ah, it's all in figuring out the right phrase.

There used to be a branch in Gooding ID. While it's been discontinued, there's probably still some remnants being handled as a group within a ward. I'd check with the Gooding 1st Ward as they meet in the same building as the discontinued unit.

Gooding is a 90 minute drive from Boise, not 4 the hours to Idaho Falls.

mevans wrote: Sun Feb 23, 2025 7:59 pm

russellhltn wrote: Sun Feb 23, 2025 7:34 pm

mevans wrote: Sun Feb 23, 2025 6:59 pm I found several sign language units in the USA in CDOL.

What did you use for a search term? I got some results, but no wards or branches. Mostly seminary or institute.

Just search for "Sign Language" - "American Sign Language" doesn't yield any results. There's a deaf branch in our area. I looked them up and noticed that the term "Sign Language" was used in the unit title and just searched for that. But if you look at the unit language in CDOL, it says "American Sign Language." There is one Sign Language branch outside of the United States - in Korea. That one just lists Korean as the language in CDOL, but has "Sign Language" in the title.

In the old CDOL I used the filter for classifications and was able to find them as well.

Yeah I'm helping continue to fork the thread

Do we know why the Meetinghouse Locator does not list ASL units? If I click the Advanced Search option under "Find a Church", the resultant language drop-down displays what seems to be a fairly exhaustive list of spoken languages that have Church units. Is perhaps ASL categorized somehow differently?

BrianEdwards wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 11:11 am Do we know why the Meetinghouse Locator does not list ASL units? If I click the Advanced Search option under "Find a Church", the resultant language drop-down displays what seems to be a fairly exhaustive list of spoken languages that have Church units. Is perhaps ASL categorized somehow differently?

I'll take a wild guess that the dropdown list was pulled from another internal list of languages. But ASL is an outlier. It's neither written nor spoken, but signed. As such, it doesn't fit the normal use for "a list of languages".

That's not a problem for the Meetinghouse Locator application. I think it simply got overlooked when the list was repurposed.