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Transcript
35 min read · 6,694 words- 0:04 – 2:29
Welcome to Google: TV fandom, fame, and meeting the people behind the internet
- SPSpeaker
So good morning. I'm very, very pleased-
- SPSpeaker
Now, now it's not on again
- SPSpeaker
... to have Marlee Matlin here, and I'm very pleased to introduce her and have her come up here and, uh, tell us her story and, and tell us about, um, some of the causes that she's committed to. Thank you. [audience applauding]
- SPSpeaker
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. And speaking of not everyone knowing who I am, it's true, there isn't. I don't know if any of you... Well, I have to admit this, but I was a huge, I actually had a huge weakness, uh, when I have the time to watch a little television, because I have four kids, and it's difficult to watch. And I have one teenage girl who's 14, and she's a huge fan of The Bachelor, okay? You all know the show The Bachelor. And it just so happened, uh, that on Dancing with the Stars, when I was there, I happened to meet the... What's his name? Jake. Oh, I actually met J- Vienna, who is the woman who grabbed Jake, or who Jake chose on this year's Bachelor, and she came up to me and she said, "Are you an actress?" And of course, clearly, it proves that not everybody knows who I am. [audience laughing] Anyway, I am so happy to be here today at the coolest place, the mecca of the internet world, Google. Google, is this the sign? What's the sign for Google? This is the sign. Google headquarters. It's like that moment when Darth Vader said, "Luke, I am your father." [audience laughing] And everyone gasped and said, "No way. I can't believe it's happening." It's the ultimate cool to be here today. And there's free food, too. I mean, you guys have free Red Bull, you have free food. I can't believe it. [audience laughing] It's really great. So, is there a resume that I need to give you if I wanna apply for a job here? Maybe I could play pool all day. I don't know. Anyway, thank you. It's a fun place to be here, and it's fun, and thank you to having me here. But more importantly, being here with you, I can finally see some of the faces behind the news and the entertainment and the information that the world has come to rely upon. And now that I see you, I want to say thank you for all that you are doing. You are fantastic. Thank you very much. Well, I know that you're anxious
- 2:29 – 4:31
Why the book is called "I'll Scream Later": sobriety, rehab, and an Oscar nomination
- SPSpeaker
to have me talk about my book, that book that is called I'll Scream Later. And some of you may wonder where that title came from. Well, I have to admit that if you didn't know already, I am a recovering drug addict. And today it's been 23 years, 2 months, and 20 days. And just- [audience applauding] Thank you. [audience applauding] And just after I won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in Children of a Lesser God, I checked myself into rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic, unlike today, where my entire journey would have been covered by TMZ and Perez Hilton. Back then, way back then, there was no such thing as, uh, being able to... There, there was no such thing as those things, so I was able to check in in secret. And while I was there, I was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. So if you can imagine, I must be the only person to get that, "Congratulations, you've been nominated," call while working on my sobriety at the Betty Ford Clinic. So anyway, when the phone call came in from Jack here, uh, who, by the way, this is Jack Jason, my interpreter, if I didn't introduce him already. [audience applauding] Sorry. I don't have a male voice. I just wanted to let you know that. [audience laughing] Well, maybe after a couple of cigarettes. No, anyway. [audience laughing] Anyway, um, he asked me for a reaction or a statement which wasn't gonna be staying sober. No. [laughs] Thank you for the nomination, but I'm staying sober. I'm keeping sober. No, I didn't wanna say that. So instead, I said, "Tell them I'll scream later." And that phrase stuck with me ever since. And I think it strikes the right tone of humor and irony coming from this deaf gal, because as you'll see in my book, I may be deaf, but I'm probably one of the loudest people you'll ever meet. My good friend and mentor, Henry Winkler,
- 4:31 – 6:03
Will, intention, and building a life beyond others’ expectations
- SPSpeaker
put it perfectly when he told me, "If you will it, it is not a dream." For me, if you will it, it is not a dream. It's about intention. And for me, even though I was different than everyone else, I had the will and the desire to make something happen for myself. And everything else just followed. But times have changed. Though today I'm an actress and a film producer, as well as an advocate for children's and disability-related causes, and most recently a dancer on Dancing With the Stars. I hope you voted for me. Did you vote? Okay. [audience laughing] I'm also a mother of four. And as a result, I'm a cook, and a carpool driver, and a room mother, and a conflict mediator, and a closet organizer, and a pretend math whiz. Seriously, life is good. It's been 23 years since critics said that I won my Academy Award out of pity, and that I would never work in Hollywood again simply because I was deaf, and I'm still here. The barriers that many had predicted would stop my career dead in its tracks have virtually vanished. Thanks to many working actors like me who are deaf or differently abled, attitudes have changed. Now,
- 6:03 – 8:12
Everyday misconceptions about deafness: Hollywood, live TV, and airline mishaps
- SPSpeaker
most of the barriers I face are more humorous than they are distressing. And here are a couple of examples. Because once, when I was working on a television show with Mark Harmon called Reasonable Doubts, many of you are probably too young to even know this program was on the air. But anyway, once while working the program, an NBC executive came to visit the studio where we were shooting the show. And after watching me work for a little while, he said to the executive producer of the show, "You know that Marlee Matlin is great. She's great. Is she gonna be deaf for the whole show?" [laughs] It's okay. I'm over it. And once, while I was ready to appear live on CNN in front of millions of viewers, as you know CNN has, the director was counting down the seconds before we were live on air, and I was getting my makeup, my last looks, and Jack was sitting with the reporter on the other side of the camera. As we were counting down with just three seconds, she leaned over to Jack and said, "Could you tell Marlee that my dog is deaf, just like her?" And suddenly I was live on television and I'm thinking, "What does she want me to... Does she wanna throw me a bone? Does she want me to say woof? I don't know." Okay. And this thing doesn't only happen in Hollywood. It happened to me a couple of times, I don't know about you, to those people who are deaf, but I'm on a plane, ready for the plane to take off. I'm set, my seatbelt is on, and Jack and I are signing to each other. The flight attendant comes over, sees me signing, waves, gives me a menu. As soon as she sees me signing, she grabs the menu out of my hand, goes to the galley, and returns back with a new menu in braille. [laughs] Actually, they have to think about it for a moment, too. And she's like, "Yes, so what's wrong? Why, I mean, don't you need the braille?" And I'm like, "Uh, no, I'm deaf, not blind." And then she realizes it, and then I never see her for the rest of the flight. [laughs] I use these stories not to trivialize
- 8:12 – 9:42
Respect and being heard: upbringing, resilience, and constant explanations
- SPSpeaker
the barriers facing people like myself, because every day there is still discrimination against differently abled people and people who are deaf. And whether being in front of the camera, out and about being a mom, or working on behalf of some of my favorite charities, my message has always been the same, and one that I got from my parents, that no matter what abilities we possess, all of us not only deserve respect, we deserve to be heard. In my book, I chronicle that it wasn't always easy, that sometimes I was made fun of out there, and sometimes I fell. But it was all a part of growing up. Just because I was deaf, my parents felt that I should not live a sheltered life, and far from it. They believed that it was important for me to embrace life, both the good and the bad. So even though I danced in front of 25 million people each week on Dancing With the Stars or stood my ground as strong characters who just happened to be deaf on shows like The L Word and on The West Wing, I still have days when I feel like I'm going out that front door of my parents' house for the first time to prove that I can do anything except hear. And
- 9:42 – 10:43
Accessibility and YouTube captions: praising Google and the internet’s role
- SPSpeaker
oftentimes, I still find myself explaining that, yes, I do drive a car, and yes, I can have children, and yes, I am a working actress. Well, fortunately with your commitment here today to creating greater accessibility, you at Google have demonstrated that you get it. You get it. Because what you're doing here today with YouTube and automatic captioning is nothing short of extraordinary. I cannot tell you how much I've come to rely on the internet for my communication needs, and many others out there, many millions of others out there. I'm sure you probably heard of the irony of the invention of the telephone, that when Alexander Graham Bell, who had a deaf wife and a deaf mother, wanted to find a way to help them communicate, he thought of the television, excuse
- 10:43 – 12:14
Captioning advocacy: from "The Wizard of Oz" to TV legislation and new internet gaps
- SPSpeaker
me, the telephone as a tool that would help them. But little did he realize that the telephone would be one of the greatest barriers when it came to communication between the deaf and the hearing world. Right there. 20 years ago, I lobbied and I succeeded in getting the film which inspired me to be an actress, The Wizard of Oz, to be closed captioned for the first time. Because captioning was crucial in bringing the words that you all take for granted t- to my world. And the following year, in 1990, I took it one step further and I went to Capitol Hill to lobby on behalf of the legislation that all televisions 13 inches or larger should be equipped with closed captioning technology. Like the critics who doubted my ability to be an actor because in their eyes my deafness put me on a level below my peers, TV manufacturers and programmers thought that millions of Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing didn't deserve equal access through closed captioning. But with the hard work and determination, we were successful in getting the Decoder Act bill passed six years later. And legislation was passed that required that all
- 12:14 – 15:47
The breaking point: uncaptained streaming events and mobilizing with social media
- SPSpeaker
broadcast television be 100% closed captioned. But like the irony of the invention of the telephone, the internet eventually became a bigger barrier than one could ever imagine when it came to closed captioning content on broadband. Here's a good example. Just last October, The Wizard of Oz celebrated a wonderful mil- a milestone, the 75th anniversary of its initial release, and for the first time in broadcast history, it was going to be streamed live to every single American who had access to a computer for free. So, free, free, absolutely free. So I was eager to share the film with my children, particularly my then five-year-old daughter, in whose eyes I saw the same sense of wonderment and excitement that I had when I was seven watching the film for the first time about the young girl with the ruby slippers who dreamt of someplace over the rainbow. But when I opened up my laptop and hit the play button, I was horrified to find that the film that I had lobbied to get closed captioned 20 years earlier was shown without captions. I was told that the technology was not out there, and that I had to be patient and to wait. Well, as I said, I like to make noise. So I tweeted like crazy to the thousands of followers that I had on Twitter, and I made sure that my friends, like Ashton Kutcher and Alyssa Milano, knew what was going on and what was going on with closed captioning on the internet, and I encouraged them to retweet, and they did. Then I found out there was actually no problem with the technology and in fact, the technology is out there to stream content with closed captions. When it came down to the same issue, a lack of understanding, it was a lack of understanding and that a large percentage of manufacturers said that we said that you need to provide access for the millions of viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing. So by providing closed caption, they can get access. More importantly, they failed to understand that original programming had captions, but that the internet had to have the captions as well. Eventually, the frustration increased so much because I had to fight to make twen- to do what I did 20 years ago all over again. The ultimate irony came during the unveiling of the celebration of Helen Keller's life. There was a statue being unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda, and it was streamed live without captions. Here we're celebrating and honoring a woman who fought for equality and accessibility over 100 years ago, and who I looked up to as a role model, and I wasn't even able to share the celebration of her life? It was simply unacceptable, unacceptable. But you at Google, you changed all that. Just as you did
- 15:47 – 18:49
Premiering "My Deaf Family": concept, pitching setbacks, and choosing YouTube
- SPSpeaker
when you pioneered the search engine, you are helping to ensure the commitment and standards and legislation that we worked for accessing broadcast TV are continuing here with your efforts in getting hundreds and thousands of videos on YouTube broadcast with closed captions. So today, I am proud to premiere the pilot episode of a show that I produced, which I hope will become a series, either on network or web. It's called My Deaf Family, and the show chronicles a family from right here in the San Francisco Bay Area that is made up of both deaf and hearing family members. It's told from the perspective of 15-year-old Jared Ferrel, who is hearing. Jared's parents are deaf, and they work nearby here at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. And Jared also has three siblings, two of whom are deaf and one who is hearing. I like to think of it as a deaf version of, uh, Little People Big World. And I even pitched it to TLC in the hopes of creating the first reality show of its kind ever, showing what life is like for millions of Americans who are deaf and hard of hearing. Unfortunately, TLC seemed more interested in doing a show about killing, um, moose with Sarah Palin. So fine. That's okay. That's all right. If TLC won't have me, I figured I'll do it my words, and using Ms. Palin's words, I'm gonna go rogue and broadcast it on YouTube, where I can call the shots and where I can gu- guaranteed that the show will be broadcast with captions. Thank you, Google, for making this happen. I also wanted to say that though I may be deaf, silence is the last thing the world will ever hear from me, and that the real handicap of deafness does not lie in the ear, it lies in the mind. Thank you for your commitment to breaking through the barriers and providing access to YouTube through automatic captioning. Through your example, you're helping to open the minds of those Who choose to handicap millions of people like myself who are deaf or hard of hearing, and who don't provide closed captioning content through broadband. Your efforts today will guarantee the hard-fought victory we won so many years ago can move forward into the 21st century. So, without any delay, please enjoy the premiere of My Deaf Family on YouTube. But before I say this, hold
- 18:49 – 21:14
Screening the pilot and acknowledging participants
- SPSpeaker
on one second, I wanna introduce to you one of the stars of My Deaf Family, of this program, Brigetta Born-Fearl is here with us today. Could you please stand up? [audience applauds] Thank you for coming out, taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us. So, I wanna thank the children and the students from the California School for the Deaf who are with us today, who came out today with us. [audience applauds] So, uh, just two things. Enjoy the show, uh, and I'm gonna think about where to find my glasses so I can read some more.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Okay. Let's go.
- SPSpeaker
[upbeat music] My name is Jared, I'm 15, and I have a family of six. My dad's name is Leslie. My mom's name is Brigetta. I have a younger brother, his name is Gideon. I have a little sister named Sabrina.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
My youngest brother is Elijah. And this is My Deaf Family.
- SPSpeaker
[audience applauds] So there you go. There you go. This was something that we had been hoping for a long time, and now we have the opportunity to put it there on YouTube, and we hope that millions of people worldwide will have the chance to see this. And this makes it even bigger than just the pilot. And thank you, Brigetta. Thank you, Brigetta, for letting us come into your home, for letting us into your home. And this was shot just in one and a half days. That's all we had, just one and a half days to shoot. And, uh, you know, it's almost unheard of in the reality programming business to make a pilot that only covers one and a half days of a family's life. But I'm very proud of it, and I hope that you all enjoyed it. And I think that we also might be having some, um... Do, do I need to give you the microphone? Do we have question and answers, or what goes on here?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. So, um, I'm gonna ask a few questions, and then I'd really like to open it up to the audience. And I'll just start by saying that you're such an inspiration, and that your story is fantastic and wonderful, and thank you for coming and sharing. And, um, again, it really is a commitment of ours as a company to make information accessible. So I'm so pleased that you can be here and we can share that common goal.
- SPSpeaker
Thank you.
- 21:14 – 23:47
Accessibility Q&A: caption customization, accuracy, and identifying who’s speaking
- SPSpeaker
Um, so I'll start with, given that we have, um, people in the company here who are, um, probably engineers, probably salespeople, across the company, and they're all people who can work on some of the accessibility, what are some of the things that you would like to see us doing on the internet, um, and how can we make the captioning even better?
- SPSpeaker
Well, um, I mean, first of all, if you could make all the captions purple with a yellow background... No, I'm just joking.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
I'm just joking. Or a different font perhaps. We could go to Helvetica or something, whatever. No. Do they have that? Yeah. Do you have the ability to change the font? You do? You can change the font?
- SPSpeaker
Oh.
- SPSpeaker
Ooh, I like that. That answered my question right away. Um, listen, you're doing it. You are doing it already. You're d- you're doing it all. I, I applaud you all for what you've done so far. I, I don't think there's really any move... I, I don't know what more I could ask for. I know that you can't do it immediately perfectly in terms of automatic captioning so that it, y- the voice recognition works al- you know, 100%, and there might be some confusion. It takes time. It certainly takes time, but you're putting it out there. And, and, you know, we'll... There's room to make it perfect. I'll be patient.
- SPSpeaker
Great. Well, we'll definitely be working on it. Um, I looked at some last night, and um, like, I noticed that sometimes when people put them on manually, you can't always tell who is speaking. Um, for example, that, like, I li- watched your interview on Larry King, and I didn't know when it was... Like, if I didn't hear it, it wouldn't have been always possible to know when you were speaking versus when your, Larry King or the interviewer was speaking. So I thought, like, that would be one example, is that we actually always have connotation of who is the speaker, um, for example.
- SPSpeaker
Well, you know, listen, when, when captions first came out, um, on television, uh, it, you know, it was, like, Three's Company was the first show that had captions. I was just fascinated with the fact that there were words on the screen. I mean, it was a dream that we had. I mean, it would be great to think about having words way back then. And now it's a reality, but when they first came out, um, it took a little bit of, of, of getting used to and adjustment to know who was talking and to be able to understand. But then eventually, um, they made adjustments so that they had one person speaking on one side of the screen and one person speaking on the other side of the screen with the captions. So it's just a matter of time. It's... I, I wouldn't like it if they put two different colors on there, as they do in some countries with captions. I think it's too confusing. I think that's too confusing. I mean, I personally don't care for that kind of, of captioning. So.
- 23:47 – 25:56
Policy and legislation: pushing broadband captioning and the challenges of user-generated video
- SPSpeaker
Okay, great. Um, so I'll ask one more question, and then I'd love to hear from the audience here. Um, but what kind of... Is there any legislation or any, um, ways that we could work with policy, um, meaning Google the company?
- SPSpeaker
Well, there's a, a, there's a law called H.R.3101. I... Excuse me, I didn't mean to interrupt. Um, but, uh, she knows. Uh, [laughs] so H.R.3101 is out there up on the Hill that, that we want to, to get passed, so that would allow for that accessibility in the internet, as we were talking about today. It's just not been, uh, passed yet.
- SPSpeaker
Ca- can you say a little bit about what it is? Just so everyone here knows
- SPSpeaker
Well, Jack, Jack can do that [laughs] better than I can. Um, uh, it's basically-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... yes, it's basically, um, as Marlee said in, back in 1990 and then again in 1994, legislation was passed that required broadcasters to close caption because they wouldn't do it themselves. Now, with everything moving to the internet, it seems that the information that's there captioned isn't moving with captions, and they're still not captioning it there. So HR 301 is intended to force internet providers to caption what's already been captioned. So it's applying that law to the internet, and there's a lot of complaints. Well, a lot of it is user generated. We can't caption that. How are you gonna force us to do that? I mean, a lot of stuff on YouTube is, is made by people who go to YouTube. Well, you guys solved that problem with automatic captions. Now it's time for the other people to do that. So that's what HR 311 is intended to do, and we're waiting for the vote or at least to be even brought up. I'm not familiar with the legislative process, but we're waiting for sponsors. And the health care bill took up a lot of, of, of attention, and everybody was focused on that. So now, hopefully, we can move to this. And I've been working very closely with the National Association of the Deaf and hoping that their efforts... I mean, in their terms, I'm their spokesperson when it comes for closed captioning, and hopefully we can work together to make sure that this legislation passes.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm. Great. Well, what questions? People wanna come to the, uh, audience, or come to the, I'll hand the, the mic over.
- 25:56 – 30:28
Audience Q&A: audio description for blind viewers, attracting attention visually, and playback speed
- SPSpeaker
Um, a special question for you. My colleague is actually blind, and we've just watched your reality TV, and there were certain points where the text appeared but there was no audio, so she couldn't actually hear what was going on. So it'd be really cool if you could find a way to make that happen.
- SPSpeaker
Well, I, I understand, and I believe that they're working on that audio description technology for people who have low vision or who are visually impaired. Um, people who can hear, uh, there sure, certainly needs to have some sort of a, a description, audio description on screen. Um, I believe that they're working on that here, and I'll bring up, uh, Naomi to explain that.
- SPSpeaker
This is the perfect opportunity for me to put in a plug for the Access Eng team. We have a headcount in our team, and if you would like to come and help us work on these problems, we have a list of really interesting problems we're working on right now. Um, there are ways of doing audio description in YouTube right now. You do it by mixing in the audio, so it's called open audio. And, um, if anybody is curious, I, uh, I can send out an email maybe through the authors team list that includes some lists, some links to videos that have that. Um, so, uh, I'm gonna hand this back to somebody before I babble too much.
- SPSpeaker
No, no, absolutely, Naomi. It's important.
- SPSpeaker
Great. Other, other questions? Sure. You guys can also stand up at the mic there.
- SPSpeaker
Hi. A couple of comments and a question. Um, first, uh, for making the captioning technologies at Google, uh, become a possibility, uh, we, there is one person I would like to recognize. That's, uh, my good friend Ken Herensten sitting right there. And-
- SPSpeaker
I was planning to do that. Yes, Ken Herensten. [clapping]
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. He has been pushing tirelessly for this to happen in the past few years, and he happened to be my first office mate when he joined Google seven years and two weeks ago. And my other office mate was, uh, Greg Bajars, who was hard of hearing, and I was designing servers. And I had, I had these big loud machines in my room, and I had the perfect roommates. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
They didn't mind. [laughs] So, and, uh, uh, piece of question is, uh, I'm an engineer, so I was curious, like, when we hearing people in a room want to attract attention, we usually, like, use a glass or something to make a noise so everybody, to, to attract everyone's attention. Uh, I wonder if, uh, for people who don't hear, uh, how do you do that? Do you like... [knocking microphone]
- SPSpeaker
Or...
- SPSpeaker
Really? But-
- SPSpeaker
No, we actually, we flash the lights. We just-
- SPSpeaker
Oh
- SPSpeaker
... flick the lights off and on.
- SPSpeaker
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Or we wave, but that's, and because that's very visible. I mean, I could see it because my peripheral vision is very good. I mean, my eyes are the means of which I depend on to use, just as you depend on your ears to hear, and you can hear anything. So I'm very visual, and if you do this or if you do this, um, like when there's paparazzi, for example. Here's a good example. When I go to paparazzi, they're very smart. You know, at first when I came into the business, they would yell my name, Marlee, Marlee, Marlee, Marlee. And of course, I would just stand there like, "What are they..." You know. Whoopi Goldberg said, "Hey, guys, she's deaf. You can't yell at a deaf woman."
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
And then, of course, then they came up with something. They'd do this. They'd just make up, they, they do pretend sign language, and then I would look, and then they'd take my picture, and they'd do some more pretend sign language, and then you look, and they'd take my picture. And then they've learned this. They still do this to this day. It works. It works for me. So I mean, for you to get the attention of someone who's deaf, uh, who can't hear, you just do this, or you just, you know, tap their shoulder, or... I mean, anything that involves hand movement or flashing the light off and on from across the room, that usually works. Or throw something. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] Okay.
- SPSpeaker
You know, spit, spitball that way.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] Uh, then one suggestion, and this is more for Ken, actually. Uh, you talk about, like, uh, when you have caption, captions, you sometimes you can't really tell who, which one on screen is talking. And since we have this automatic captioning technology mostly related to voice recognition, we can probably also recognize the tone in the voice, uh, uh, like the, uh, pitch in the voice to tell whether it's male or female or other, uh, traits of the, the actors. Then, uh, as we said, you said earlier, we can font, we can put different fonts-
- SPSpeaker
I, I'd be really, really curious to see that. I'd be really curious to see that
- SPSpeaker
... so, so we can use a softer font when it's a softer voice and use a square font when it's a strong voice, for example.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm. Go for it. What are you waiting for? Great. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.
- 30:28 – 39:47
Living with disability and looking ahead: parenting, careers, and technology’s impact
- SPSpeaker
Um, uh, I'm a, I'm a father of, um, five years old blind son. So if you were actually back to five years old, uh, what do you want to ask your parents? W- what do you want from them, uh, mostly or... I'm sorry. Um, English is my second language.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
So, I, uh-
- SPSpeaker
Mine, too.
- SPSpeaker
Mine, too. I mean, I think if, if I were in your child's shoes-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Uh, five years old back.
- SPSpeaker
Five years old.
- SPSpeaker
If you were.
- SPSpeaker
Um, what I would want from my parents?
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- SPSpeaker
I would say or ask for that you take good care of me, that you don't deny me anything, and d- that you let me be who I am. Don't try to restrain me from any experiences in life. Let me go out there, explore the world, let me feel, let me touch, let me meet. Treat me as if I could see.
- SPSpeaker
Okay. Thank you. Actually, caption is very helpful for me to understand English.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
So I'm kind-
- SPSpeaker
See?
- SPSpeaker
There you go.
- SPSpeaker
You go. Thank you very much for your comment. Thank you.
- SPSpeaker
[claps]
- SPSpeaker
Hi. Thank you very much for coming here. Um, one of the things I find challenging about, uh, using video and audio content is how long it takes to get the information from it compared with reading written content, and I was wondering whether there's, uh, anything that you've been thinking about or working for to enable basically the faster playing of captions or, uh, faster getting of information from video content and audio content.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, I'm gonna give your question to Ken because he's more adept at answering that question perhaps.
- SPSpeaker
The answer is yes.
- SPSpeaker
He said the answer is yes. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
The answer is yes. [laughs] We are working on it. We've got that going now for businesses.
- SPSpeaker
Sorry. Google Video for Business.
- SPSpeaker
Google Bus- Video for Business. Do you wanna explain some, Naomi?
- SPSpeaker
So if you guys look at our internal videos on Google Video for Business, you can see now there's a little slider that has a rabbit and a turtle on it, and if you slide it up to the rabbit end, it goes faster. And, um, this is actually worked on by Daniel Steinberg. It's pretty amazing. If, uh, if you just speeded up audio normally, it would, y- the pitch would be really high. It would sound like the lecture was being given by chipmunks. So we actually change the pitch so it sounds sort of kind of normal. And I turn that off 'cause it annoys me even though we change the pitch. I just watch the captions. So if you look at our internal videos, um, from, like, our all-hands meetings, you can see those with captions, and you can watch them at two and a half times the speed. And this isn't just an internal Google thing. Um, anybody who has Google Apps has access to this technology if they turn it on.
- SPSpeaker
Boy, that is so out of my world. I can... I'm so amazed. [laughs] I'm so amazed. But I'm learning. I'm learning.
- SPSpeaker
So we have one comment here, um, of, uh, Jassa, who wanted to just comment on the previous, uh, question of, of the parent who has the blind son.
- SPSpeaker
So, uh, just to give a background, I'm blind myself. Um, I mean, just to add to that, one thing I would definitely like to tell you is don't treat your kid any different. Trust me. If you let it, let him or her go, they will reach the extremes that will surprise you. Don't treat them any, any, any different at all. Because as I see a disability is everybody ha- every human being has a limitation. A blind person just has a limitation of not be- not being able to see. But trust me, they can use their other senses to reach the sky. So just let them go. Let them achieve anything and everything that they want. That is going to be the most, most important thing for them in their life.
- SPSpeaker
Thank you.
Episode duration: 39:47
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Transcript of episode KrQmBKPCBMg
