This post is by guest author 
Narayanan Ramakrishnan, whose Open-Captions project parses the closed caption track of a YouTube video to provide ASL translations of words. Caption tracks include timestamps and text, parsing this as meta data opens new opportunities for contextually dynamic pages.
Narayanan is a GeorgiaTech graduate and has a passion for creating accessible tech projects. Previous projects include an accessible map of New York City, transliteration of Facebook posts, and visual guide to Indian politics.
What is Open-Captions?
According to research, over 90% of deaf children have hearing parents who “frequently do not have fully effective means of communicating with them”. The American Sign Language (ASL) is a difficult language to learn, especially as a second language.
Open-Captions makes it easy for parents and children to learn and practice American Sign Language together while watching their favorite videos on YouTube. People can find closed captioned videos on any topic with the Open-Captions search engine. The viewer is able to select individual words in the video’s caption stream and see the American Sign Language representation of the word.
Continue reading Open-Captions, Using Closed Captions as Meta Data for ASL
