In this episode of Radiolab, producer Simon Adler shares a story that begins with his mother watching television with closed captioning, which leads him to question how those captions are created. The hosts, Lulu Miller and Simon Adler, delve into the history of closed captioning, starting with Greg Leibach's experiences as a deaf individual and the "Deaf President Now" protest at Gallaudet University in 1988, which significantly influenced disability rights and captioning mandates. They then explore the evolution of captioning techniques, from stenographers to "voice writing," where individuals echoed spoken words into a computer using a specialized language of code words to improve accuracy. The episode further discusses the impact of AI on the captioning industry, with AI now handling a significant portion of closed captioning tasks, and reflects on the broader implications of AI in various fields, advocating for a creative and collaborative approach to these technologies.
