Accessible captions for events: how ILA leveraged spf.io to highlight industry leaders and bridge the divide with multilingual subtitles

Jan 21, 2022 | Blog, Hopin, Stories

Learn about captions for events: Are you a virtual conference platform wanting to stand out by providing accessibility and translation options? Get in touch to partner with spf.io here.

The setting: Providing multilingual captions for events

Interaction Latin America (ILA) organizers were in the midst of organizing an ambitious, immersive conference highlighting Latin American voices in design. They planned to leverage new technologies to strengthen communities, relationships, and personal experiences. To achieve success for this online event during the coronavirus pandemic, it was critical to choose the right tools to convey a welcoming feeling that cultivated a culture of collaboration.

In the online space, bringing in sensory experiences that inspire international connection is no easy feat. Challenges that organizers face include:

  • Technical difficulties
  • Challenging transitions between multimedia (ex. recorded content to live broadcasts)
  • Engaging with people virtually through interactive events that mimic in-person connection.
  • Communicating meaningfully in multiple languages

ILA event planners rose to the challenge of designing the first virtual ILA conference ever offered. To create an effective multilingual experience, they chose Hopin to stream live and recorded presentations, with each stage hosting one of three different language audio tracks (Spanish, English, or Portuguese). They hired language professionals for simultaneous interpreting and contracted a vendor to supply captions and subtitles. However, at the last minute, the captioning vendor backed out since they could not handle switching between presentations with multiple source languages.

The ILA team now faced the dilemma of finding, in short order, a solution that could work with multiple source languages other than English – a rarity in the subtitling services space. They searched online for the best subtitling service for Hopin, and nothing seemed suitable – until they found spf.io. From the very start, spf.io was designed for multilingual events, and spf.io’s team quickly developed a comprehensive solution for ILA’s specific goals with a record turnaround time.

We were in a time crunch and not only did you guys step up to the plate, you were able to sit down with us, brainstorm what we had, what you could do – and then you went all in and made sure that it went seamless through the event. So we really appreciated all your support and making sure that it was successful. Thank you.
– Mariana
ILA ‘21 Project Manager, WebRTC.ventures COO

Note: Spf.io works with most platforms, providing a cohesive interface that can host and translate all your content, regardless of the tool you choose to use for your webinars, conferences, meetings, or video sharing. Whether it’s YouTube, Vimeo, Hopin, Airmeet, or Facebook, spf.io helps you meet and exceed expectations for multilingual accessibility.

Solutions by platform

Customers using these platforms have used spf.io to make their events accessible and multilingual:

The challenge: A fully multilingual, multicultural, and interactive conference experience

A different country hosts ILA every year, and the conference draws inspiration from the local culture and landscape. This year’s event highlighted themes from Costa Rica’s rich natural heritage, including its amazing biodiversity’s ability to inspire design.

Conference location - Costa Rica image

ILA outlined a powerful vision for the conference with specific goals:

  • Give voice to Latin American designers and highlight LATAM leaders/speakers from around the world
  • Celebrate culture and community with a festive conference
  • Provide a diverse and engaging experience with interpersonal interaction, cultural immersion & discovery, experiential sessions, balanced break segments, and exchange of ideas

In order to achieve these goals, ILA employed a variety of media formats:

  • Pre-recorded talks
  • Panel discussions
  • Live Q&As
  • Pre-recorded media clips showcasing environment and culture
  • Live experiences like coffee tasting and dance lessons

With live interpreters on-site, they needed an adaptable multilingual subtitling solution that could provide on-demand translation of captions in three different languages, with the ability to switch source languages between sessions.

 –> Continue reading Part 2: Providing captions for events with speaker presentations, live Q&As, and panels in three different languages)

 

Part 1 – Multilingual conference setup (this article) | Part 2 – Multilingual solutions | Part 3 – Lessons learned

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