The spf.io team sat down with UpSkill Universe (formerly known as UpSkill Digital) to explore their success in making online training accessible and inclusive to thousands of learners.
Read on to learn about the unexpected bonus win that saved them days of work!
The Challenge of Switching to Online Training
UpSkill Universe provides free training to thousands of job seekers across the UK through partnerships with charities, organizations, and initiatives like Google Digital Garage (GDG). Their mission to close the digital skills gap through inclusive and personalized learning faced new challenges when transitioning to online training. Making content accessible to diverse learners–including the Deaf, Hard of Hearing, people with color blindness, and English language learners–became a top priority.
Due to COVID, UpSkill had to quickly adopt a fully online, trainer-plus-moderator webinar format when in-person events were canceled. Making this transition while maintaining accessibility to all learners, regardless of language and abilities, required accurate captioning to deliver an engaging and inclusive learning experience.
Initially, UpSkill used OBS to stream classes, but the technical challenges caused significant burnout among trainers, with tech checks lasting up to 45 minutes. Switching to StreamYard simplified the streaming process but UpSkill still needed a reliable captioning tool. Their previous free captioning service only offered open captions (constantly visible with no option to turn them off). It also struggled with accurately captioning the trainers’ speech with diverse UK accents. These mistakes started to create barriers to learning.
To illustrate these barriers, look at the following captions generated by the legacy captioning tool and compare it with the one from spf.io.
As Aimee Goodwin, Programme Director at UpSkill, shared, “It got to the point where the captions were more distracting than they were helpful.”
That’s when UpSkill turned to spf.io–and the results were immediate. The quality of captions dramatically improved, particularly in handling diverse UK accents, making the content more accessible and engaging for students and trainers alike.
How spf.io Empowers Accessible and Multilingual Online Training
Spf.io’s all-in-one platform empowered UpSkill to enhance the learning experience for diverse students. Integrating seamlessly with YouTube for closed captioning, spf.io allows students to personalize captions by adjusting font sizes, colors, and toggling captions on or off. These customizable features greatly enhance accessibility and give students control over how they engage with the course content.
UpSkill added spf.io’s closed captions in its Google Digital Garage’s videos on YouTube.
Aimee Goodwin
Programme Director
Goodwin emphasized the impact of these changes:
“UpSkill Digital and Google have always had inclusivity at the start and forefront of what we do. All of the content that we create from the visual aspect is always inclusive in the colors that we use, the sizing that we use, [and] that we avoid certain colors clashing with one another. So anyone with color blindness or any impairments to seeing is able to absorb the content. We also keep the content live on YouTube for 24 hours, so anybody who maybe needs to go back and rewatch it or learn in a different capacity [can]. It’s just to ensure that there’s asynchronous learning available.”
Aimee Goodwin
Programme Director at UpSkill
Another standout feature of spf.io is its ability to train its system to recognize specific vocabulary. This ensures proper spelling of names, specialized terms, and frequently used phrases. The more they use spf.io, the more accurate the captions become.
A Winning Combination: spf.io and StreamYard
The combination of StreamYard for streaming classes and spf.io’s captioning and translation services transformed UpSkill’s training delivery. Spf.io’s browser-based platform integrates seamlessly with various platforms or providers, enabling UpSkill to scale easily from in-person to virtual and hybrid events. This integration ensured technical limitations did not compromise UpSkill’s focus on quality content delivery.
Goodwin praised spf.io’s seamless integration with StreamYard:
“We came across spf.io as it was the only way to caption using StreamYard. We’d been using OBS and a free online cloud captioning service which just was not reliable. It became incredibly distracting for users as the captions being spurted out were incorrect a good 20% of the time. So the accuracy we get from spf.io is amazing, and the AI…For example, when the trainer says SEO, we saw that actually [got] captured as opposed to See Ho or something along those lines.”
Using a consistent tool across all programs ensures UpSkill provides high-quality captions and translations, creating a better experience for their audience.
Efficient Course Auditing with spf.io’s Audio Video Captions & Subtitles
In addition to enhancing accessibility, spf.io delivered a surprising time-saving benefit. When tasked with updating 90 video courses–none of which had scripts–UpSkill initially estimated it would take months to transcribe the content manually. However, spf.io’s Audio Video Captions & Subtitles (AVCS) technology allowed them to autogenerate transcripts by simply uploading the videos. This reduced the task from months to just a few days, allowing trainers to focus on improving course content.
Goodwin reflected on this efficiency boost:
“In order to do the work we had to transcribe all of the videos, and that’s where spf.io really came in to help us…In the end, to download and reupload and have the transcribe tool work took a couple of days, which was really impressive [and] actually gave our trainers the ability to really focus…It really reduced our timelines down massively with that project because a lot of the heavy lifting [of transcribing] was just covered.”
Advancing UpSkill’s Mission with spf.io
Spf.io’s AI-powered tools have improved accessibility and helped UpSkill and GDG stay true to their commitment to inclusivity and quality education.
Goodwin highlighted spf.io’s role in supporting their goals:
“Google Digital Garage always strives to be inclusive–this starts with the design of the courses themselves from font size and coloring to ensuring the webinars are closed captioned so that everyone can learn…We love the ability that spf.io gives us from a translation perspective–Google is a global brand and we [UpSkill Universe] work with such a small area of it. Having this tool has given us the opportunity to expand to other Grow with Google projects across the world.”
With support for over 100 languages, spf.io enables organizations like UpSkill to deliver accessible, multilingual training on a global scale, whether for in-person, online, or hybrid events.
Chris Lim, Co-founder and CEO of spf.io, emphasized the value of this partnership:
“We are excited to continue supporting UpSkill and Google Digital Garage in advancing digital literacy, accessibility, and social impact. Collaborating with partners who can quickly adapt to meet their student’s needs is a valuable opportunity for us.”
🙌 Thank you to Aimee Goodwin (Programme Director at UpSkill Universe) for sharing her time and expertise for this article.
UpSkill’s mission is “to provide world-class learning solutions that equip those in need with the skills, confidence, and pathways to success.”
Google Digital Garage (GDG) is a Grow with Google Programme. “Grow with Google helps ensure that the opportunities created by technology are available to everyone. Through tools and training, we help people get the right skills to find jobs they want, advance their careers, and grow their businesses.”
Spf.io is an all-in-one translation and accessibility platform. Our mission is to make every event, content, and conversation accessible in any language.
Ready to enhance your training programs with captioning, translation, and more?
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