2019 NAB Show (April 8 to 11, Las Vegas) will host the showcase of the latest innovation from ENCO. The Michigan company has just announced that enCaption4 software will enable radio broadcasters to provide low-latency automated closed and open captioning to its hearing-impaired audience through a mobile app or a web browser.

In addition, the automated captioning of radio shows, such as talk shows, will result in searchable transcripts that can be posted online, improving SEO for broadcasters. ENCO also remarks that this solution will also be useful for non-hearing-impaired OTT and mobile users, who could consume content on “mute” through these captions, and would help boost Visual Radio’s programming, which is actually a trend in many regions.

According to Ken Frommert, President of ENCO, “There is a lot of fantastic content that is only available on radio, and which should be accessible to everyone regardless of any hearing disabilities. We’re excited to combine our deep expertise in the radio market with the proven yet continually advancing capabilities of enCaption to break through these accessibility barriers. Just as captioning enables hearing-impaired audiences to understand and enjoy television content, the same technology now allows them to do the same for radio programming.”

enCaption can be used on-premises or in the cloud. It support analog or AES audio sources on-premises, but also it can be input via IP-based audio streams. The captions created can be output as files or streams in WebVTT format or raw text. Furthermore, enCaption can turn an audio source into a video stream with captions on a plain background or graphic. It is also possible to combine the audio (with its captions) with a separate video stream for use in a web-based video player.