Automatic captions are fast, but some meetings call for a person in the loop. SentraCaptions has an optional live correction desk that lets an operator review captions before residents see them, at the cost of a short delay. Here is how it works and how to decide when to use it.
What the live correction desk does
Human review is off by default. When you turn it on for a meeting, you choose a review delay between 5 and 30 seconds. Each caption then waits on the desk for that long before it goes out.
While a caption is waiting, an operator can:
- Fix it. Correct a misheard word or a misspelled name. Translations are redone from the fix, so every language gets the corrected version.
- Hold it. Keep it on the desk while you decide.
- Send it now. Release it right away if it is already correct.
- Drop it. Remove it so it never goes out.
Captions still waiting when captioning stops are sent, not lost.
The trade-off: accuracy vs. timing
Without review, captions typically appear about a second after speech in our own tests, and the sentence in progress updates live. With review on, viewers see captions later by the amount of delay you set. On a 15-second delay, residents read each line about 15 seconds after it was said.
That delay matters most for people who are trying to follow along in real time: a resident waiting for their item, someone listening and reading at once, or a remote attendee preparing to speak at public comment. Shorter delays keep captions closer to the speech; longer delays give the operator more time to act.
A good rule of thumb: use the shortest delay your operator can actually work with.
When a few seconds' delay is worth it
There is no single right answer. Some situations where agencies may find review worthwhile:
- Meetings full of local names. Long lists of streets, developments, programs or people that speech recognition is likely to stumble on.
- High-interest hearings. Items where many residents are watching captions or translations and a garbled line would cause confusion.
- Meetings with several translation languages. One fix on the desk corrects every language, since translations are redone from it.
- Meetings where the transcript will get heavy use. Cleaner captions mean a cleaner transcript for staff preparing minutes. Transcripts are not official minutes, but they help.
For a routine committee meeting with familiar speakers and a well-loaded glossary, you may decide the immediate captions are good enough and skip the delay.
Accuracy tools that don't add delay
The correction desk is one of several tools. The others work without slowing captions down, and they reduce how much the operator has to fix:
- Glossary. A list of local names (council members, streets, neighborhoods, programs) for speech recognition, so captions spell them right. See Caption glossary for local names.
- Autocorrect rules. Simple "wrong => right" rules applied to every caption before translation, live within seconds.
- Fixed translations. Set how specific terms are translated (Spanish today).
- Transcript editing. Fix the transcript after the meeting; translations are redone.
- Teach the fix. Turn a correction into an autocorrect rule or a glossary word, so the same mistake doesn't come back next meeting.
Many agencies may get most of the benefit from the glossary and autocorrect alone, then add the desk for the meetings that need it.
Staffing the desk
Review only works if someone is watching. A few practical points:
- Pick the operator ahead of time. Someone who knows the council, the staff and local place names will catch the most.
- Practice on a recording. Agencies can send us a recording of a past meeting and we caption and translate it, so you can judge accuracy and decide whether review is needed. See Questions to ask a live captioning vendor.
- Combine with speaker names. The same operator can type speaker names on the live desk. See Showing who's speaking in live meeting captions.
- Use pause for breaks. For recess or closed session, pause captioning. While paused nothing is captioned, translated, stored or billed, and screens show "Paused".
Human review is not CART
An operator correcting machine captions is not the same as CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation), where a human stenographer captions live. Every SentraCaptions screen still labels captions as automatic and says they may contain errors. If a deaf resident requests CART as an accommodation, your agency should consider that request; check with your city attorney or county counsel about your obligations. See Machine captions vs CART and AI captions vs human captioners.
Learn more
- Features
- How to add live captions to Zoom public meetings
- Transcripts for minutes and records
- Pricing
- Contact us to test with your own recording