In this article, we will give you some advice on steps you can take to always receive high quality automatic captions when using Typebot.

Despite the perpetual increase in overall quality, speech-to-text technology still has a long way to go when applied to challenging speech environments.

You will with no doubt experience unintelligible results when using Typebot, or any other speech-to-text provider for that matter.

We are pretty confident that our service is of high quality, but there are many measures you and your conversation partners can take to improve the automatic captions.

Be open about your needs

It is crucial that you tell people you are hard-of-hearing and rely on speech-to-text technology. By being open, people you speak with are more prone to adapting their speech in a way that enhances the quality of your automatic captions from the start.

One-at-a-time

In group conversations, tell the people you are speaking with to talk one at a time.

In heated discussions, this can of course be difficult to uphold. We recommend using turntaking features found in most video conferencing apps, such as the raise hand feature in Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

“Into the mic, not next to the mic”

When speaking, make sure that you and the ones you are speaking with always speak directly into the microphone when they are talking to you.

A large drop in voice level may cause Typebot to guess what is being said, which can lead to unwanted results.

Warn others about upcoming language shifts

A sudden shift in what language is being spoken will cause Typebot to produce some rather… interesting results.

Make sure you ask/ tell the people you are speaking with to say they are going to speak in another language and what language they will be speaking.

This gives the user enough time to change the language settings in Typebot.

Avoid unnecessary sound

When Typebot is captioning desktop audio using its default method, it will caption every intellegible sound coming from your computer.

When in a voice chat with someone, make sure you turn down or completely off sound that may interfere with Typebot’s language processing, such as in-game character voices.

“Could you repeat that, please?”

When Typebot fails to produce intelligible results, do not be afraid to ask people to repeat what they just said. People without hearing loss do that too, more often than you know!