FOR anyone who has ever watched a foreign film with subtitles, the idea of captioning an event would not be foreign.
Captioning, unlike subtitles, assigns different colours to different speakers so that those who cannot hear can still keep track of who is speaking.
Captioning will also briefly describe what is happening off screen like dogs barking, car starting, screech of brakes, doorbell or phone ringing, etc.
Fr Peter Williams, director of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference’s National Liturgical Office was in Perth on 17-18 June to deliver some seminars to clergy, the laity and Catholic educators.
Fr Peter has been leading the development of a resource to implement new changes in the English version Roman Missal.
The resource, called One Body, One Spirit in Christ, was produced by Fraynework, a digital media company based in Melbourne and established under the auspices of the Sisters of Mercy Religious congregation named after the Irish nun who founded the order in Australia in 1846, Mother Ursula Frayne.
In a first for Australia, live captioning was available to those who attended Fr Peter Williams’ presentation at the Vietnamese Catholic Community Centre in Westminster. The Emmanuel Centre had arranged for an internet connection to send an audio feed to Adelaide where a stenographer typed up what she heard and sent it back to Perth to be projected on the large screen. The stenographer was very accurate and quick.
Barbara Harris, coordinator of Emmanuel Centre, interpreted the proceedings in sign language. Deaf and hard of hearing people present at Fr Williams’ talk about the DVD resource, said, “It was really nice to have the text on the screen because if we turned away from Barbara or we don’t know sign language because we have become deafened later in life, we can still hear. We could catch up on what we missed by looking at the screen.It was wonderful.”
“Many people thought Fr Paul was typing it up because he sat at the computer. His job, though, was to make sure that the connection with Adelaide didn’t drop out and that the sounds being sent there were loud and clear,” Ms Harris said.
“The whole process, once I understood it, was very simply done.”
The backbone of the process was Skype (a software application that allows users to make voice calls over the Internet) and CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation). The sound went to Adelaide via Skype, the typing came back through Skype and straight into the CART program for projection.
Deaf and hard of hearing people are hoping that an edition of the new DVD resource One Body, One Spirit in Christ, produced by Fraynework, for ICEL, International Commission on English in the Liturgy, will also include a version with captions and Auslan.
Barbara Harris and Fr Paul said they have been “inundated with positive feedback” from people who experienced the captioning at the Vietnamese Centre.
“We are desperately looking for volunteers in the West who are involved in stenography who would be interested in developing a service here in Perth,” they said in a statement to The Record.
They said that advances in Information technology opens up doors for deaf and hard of hearing like ramps do for people with mobility issues.
“The need for inclusion is seen in all community services such as television, Internet and Web pages,” they said. “Eighty per cent of television programmes are captioned, and we see more movies captioned. The Church needs to be at the forefront.”
For more information about how you can provide live captioning, please contact Fr Paul at Emmanuel Centre on
(08) 9328 8113 or email
emmanuelcentre@westnet.com.au.