Oklahoma City company approved to provide YouTube captioning to help hearing-impaired

An Oklahoma City company was named an approved vendor by Google for providing captioning for YouTube videos.

BY SUSAN SIMPSON Comment on this article

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Published: July 1, 2010

An Oklahoma City company was named an approved vendor by Google for providing captioning for YouTube videos.

Critical Mass Productions was among 12 companies nationwide to be given "YouTube Ready Qualified Captioning Vendor” status from Google.

"This is a great opportunity for us to grow our business and help transform YouTube for the hearing-impaired,” said Don Stephens, an owner of Critical Mass Productions.

Critical Mass Productions uses transcribers, not software, to create captioning. Speech recognition software can be faulty, especially if sound quality is poor or words with different meanings sound alike, Stephens said.

Stephen said his company charges $75 to caption each YouTube video. Clients have included businesses with a marketing presence on YouTube and political candidates.

In addition, transcriptions of each video are entered into YouTube's archives so that any word can be searched.

Critical Mass Productions started in 1994 as a video production and editing company.

Co-owner David Callahan said YouTube has become a mainstay in social media. The new service will help millions of deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers but also aid the reading and literacy skills of others.