ClearCaptions® Increases Call Captioning Speed and Accuracy for Hard-of-Hearing with Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)

ROSEVILLE, Calif., April 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ClearCaptions, a leading provider of a call captioning service that enables the hard-of-hearing to communicate, has been certified by the FCC to incorporate enhanced Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). The company's captioning service provides near real-time transcription of spoken phone conversations into text captions made visible to the user during an active call on specially designed home phones, as well as iPads® and iPhones®. The certified ASR technology will increase call captioning speed and accuracy. 

With ASR technology, ClearCaptions will provide increased benefits to its customers, including more accuracy, full capitalization and punctuation, increased speed and a more consistent user experience. ClearCaptions will initially use ASR for overflow purposes, enabling the company to continue to grow without hiring additional staff or building physical call centers. This will allow the company to quickly scale up by adding servers to meet customer demand to accomplish the same growth while reducing operating costs. Utilizing ASR facilitates a lower cost structure for the company, improving its competitive strength in the industry, and ultimately enabling future cost reductions that will increase available public funds for services provided to hard-of-hearing individuals.

"With enhanced ASR technology, our customers will witness a vast increase in captioning speed and overall satisfaction," said ClearCaptions CEO Robert Rae. "This is vital to our users who depend on ClearCaptions for their daily communication."

"At ClearCaptions we're always innovating on our technology to deliver the best service to our customers," said ClearCaptions CTO Raghu Dhulipala. "We've been perfecting the use of ASR technology to deliver the highest levels of performance, reliability and availability for senior citizens and other hard of hearing individuals." 

Validating the accuracy and performance of ClearCaptions ASR technology, the FCC National Testing Lab showed the company's captioning error rate to be as much as five percent lower than those using human assisted captioners. In addition, ClearCaptions conducted testing using Cositics, LLC, an external testing company, and found that ClearCaptions' ASR-only captioning was approximately 1% more accurate than the industry average of CA-assisted captioning (see https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-21-419A1.pdf). 

Implementation of ASR technology required rigorous testing plus formal certification by the FCC.  "We're an FCC-regulated service," adds Rae. "We faithfully and stringently uphold all requirements the FCC stipulates in delivery of our service to our customers. To that end, we thank the FCC for approving our ASR certification to enable our rapid delivery of better technology to our customers."

About ClearCaptions – WordsMatter™ 
ClearCaptions, LLC., established in 2011, is a Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-certified Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service Provider. The service provides near real-time transcription of spoken phone conversations into text captions made visible to the user during an active call. Available on our specially designed home phones and on mobile devices – iPhone® and iPad® – the service is provided at no charge to qualified registered consumers through Title IV of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). For more information visit clearcaptions.com and follow us on Facebook at @ClearCaptions.

FEDERAL LAW PROHIBITS ANYONE BUT REGISTERED USERS WITH HEARING LOSS FROM USING INTERNET PROTOCOL (IP) CAPTIONED TELEPHONES WITH THE CAPTIONS TURNED ON. IP captioned telephone service may use a live operator. The operator generates captions of what the other party to the call says. These captions are then sent to your phone. There is a cost for each minute of captions generated, paid from a federally administered fund.

Contact:
Robyn Fernsworth
R2PR for ClearCaptions
[email protected]

SOURCE ClearCaptions LLC