Navigating Calls with Hearing Impairment: A Personal Journey to Otter.ai

Navigating phone or conference calls can be challenging for people with hearing impairments. Add complexities such as conversing with a very soft-spoken individual, someone with a different accent, or using a dreaded Polycom or speakerphone, and the outcome is bound to be dire. If only we could caption our calls…

But wait, we can!

In the early 2000s, I applied for and received a CapTel® captioned telephone, free of charge to those who qualify. The interface offered large, easy-to-see buttons and a screen for displaying captions. When you dial a number, your call is connected to a third-party operator who uses voice-recognition software to facilitate conversation transcription, which then shows on your screen. This was revolutionary when launched, but I found the experience frustrating due to the substantial lag between spoken dialogue and displayed captions. It made for a slow, awkward conversation filled with lulls and downtime. I returned it.

Over the years, closed captions became more mainstream on television and media such as videos, but the same could not be said for phone calls. The ones I tried were often too slow, delivered poor accuracy, or were not real-time—requiring you to press a button to “record” and release to get the transcription. Not for me.

In 2021, I stumbled across a live, real-time transcription tool called Otter.ai. This tool, marketed as AI meeting note taker, allows you to record your meetings while AI technology simultaneously provides real-time transcription. You can edit post-recording, assign speaker names, export, and share.

Initially, I was skeptical because Otter.ai was incompatible with headphones and required a computer or phone speaker. However, the live transcription feature was coveted, so I went ahead and evaluated it for two months. The transcription was slow and delayed on a few occasions, causing initial panic as I had started to rely on the captions as a lifeline. Luckily, this appeared to be due to high server demand, and hopefully, it will not remain an issue in the future. Overall, Otter.ai delivered a relatively seamless meeting experience, where I felt empowered because it helped me catch the full conversation and fully engage.

Accessibility Tool: Speech-to-text transcription using AI and machine learning
Name: otter.ai
Rating: 4.5 out of 5