NBC Sports, 3Play Media Enhance Digital Accessibility for Paris 2024

As the Paris 2024 Olympics captivated global audiences, NBC Sports, in collaboration with 3Play Media, set a new benchmark for accessibility by delivering high-quality, human-produced captioning for short-form video highlights across all digital platforms.

Using a combination of 3Play Media’s Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and human captioning ensured that d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers had immediate and equivalent access to over 4,000 video highlights produced throughout the Olympic Trials and the Olympic Games. 3Play Media and NBC Sports will be following this same process for all highlights during the Paralympic Games, commencing with today’s Opening Ceremony.

Pushing the Limits of Accessibility

Continuing to recognize the importance of inclusivity, NBC Sports partnered with 3Play Media to go beyond the limitations of solely using ASR, or AI-generated, captions. Providing a solution that allowed for timely delivery of VOD assets while also meeting their high standards of accuracy was critical for the Games.

“Every Olympics, we strive to do better than what we have done previously – there’s always room to grow; and the 2024 Paris Olympics were no different,” said Robert McKnight, Director of Media Operations at NBC Sports. “In past games, we only used AI-generated captions, which – as we found – couldn’t be relied on. Between athlete names and crowd noise, accuracy was around 50%. The challenge presented to us was ‘how do you provide video assets with great quality captions as quickly as possible’; and that’s what 3Play Media helped solve with their 1, 2 punch of ASR and human captions.”

More than 18 Months in the Making

The initiative and partnership began well over a year before the Paris Games Opening Ceremony. NBC Sports was looking to refine how they did their captions. They met with numerous vendors, ultimately deciding on 3Play Media, due in large part to the demonstrated strength of their ASR models, which had been optimized for sports content, coupled with cleanup by a highly skilled human labor force. The original thought was if human captioners already had AI captions to start with, they could review more quickly. The Olympic requirements were: 1) content’s time to market had to be ASAP; and 2) every clip needed high quality, human-reviewed captions within 1-2 hours maximum of publishing. From there, the teams worked backwards and ultimately came up with a workflow that more than satisfied those requirements. 3Play Media’s sports-optimized ASR would be delivered within a few minutes, then replaced within 2 hours by a human edited and QA’d caption file.

This new workflow slotted in seamlessly into existing NBC Sports & Olympics content delivery workflows – resulting in no noticeable impact to Production delivering the content. Using an AWS S3 bucket, video proxies were automatically exchanged between NBC Sports’ Olympic Highlights Factory and 3Play Media. This pathway was also used to immediately deliver ASR captions, followed by fully accurate files, which then were distributed to MVPDs. This proprietary process meant that ASR-only captions were only displayed on highlights for as little as 20-30 minutes before the finalized versions took their place. Additionally, 3Play Media’s patented marketplace for certified captioners enables fully on-demand support for captioning 24x7x365 without any required notice. That confidence in captioner availability paired with a seamless end-to-end workflow guaranteed that highlights would be delivered back within 2 hours, regardless of the time of the request. This enabled NBC Sports to maintain their commitment to accessibility around the clock as the Paris Games unfolded – and ensured that they never had to worry about captioning.

“For digital platforms, NBC made the commitment to cover every sport, session, and medal event.” said Eric Hamilton, NBC Sports’ Director of Digital Video Production for the Olympics. “That meant cranking out 200+ captioned highlights per day, with a substantial number from less-familiar sports like team handball and rhythmic gymnastics…each with its own rules and jargon, and athletes from everywhere – Uzbeks, Botswanans, East Timorese. They’re all Olympians, so whether they were Sha’Carri Richardson of the USA or Enkhjargal Munguntsetseg of Mongolia, we had to get names right. That’s why we depended on 3Play’s combination of ASR and human captioning to make sure we were honoring the athlete’s commitment.”

The Road Ahead: Paris 2024 Paralympics

As the spotlight shifts to the Paralympic Games, NBC Sports and 3Play Media are poised to replicate their blueprint from the Olympics success, where once again high volumes of daily highlights will pass seamlessly through this workflow, leveraging 3Play’s cutting-edge technology and highly skilled human workforce.

“3Play has proven to be a great partner during the Paris Olympic Games, responding quickly and effectively to a variety of inquiries. Heading into the Paralympics, we are confident 3Play will continue to be a valuable partner,” added Christine Dombek, Senior Product Manager of NBC Direct to Consumer TVEverywhere.

Josh Miller, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of 3Play Media, expressed his enthusiasm for the ongoing partnership: “We are honored to have contributed to making the Olympic experience inclusive for all viewers. As we gear up for the Paralympics, our commitment to delivering high-quality, real-time captioning remains unwavering.”

With thousands of highlights available on Peacock and NBCOlympics.com, viewers can expect the same level of immediate access during the Paralympic Games as they kick off on August 28th, ensuring that the spirit of the games is truly shared by everyone.