The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted conditional certification to a second telephone captioning service using automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology.
In a Memorandum Opinion and Order issued in early June, the FCC’s Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau granted conditional certification to CaptionMate, an internet protocol captioned telephone service (IP CTS) application developed by Clarity Products, LLC. CaptionMate functionality is based entirely on the use of ASR technology and does not require human communications assistance to support IP CTS services.
The CaptionMate application can be downloaded for use on iOS and Android smartphones and is also accessible through the company’s website.
The conditional approval of Clarity Products CaptionMate application is based on the FCC’s 2018 determination that automatic speech recognition is a permissible means of delivering captioned telephone services and follows the Commission’s conditional approval in early May of an IP CTS application by MachineGenius.
The Commission’s conditional certification serves to verify that the CaptionMate application meets or exceeds the standards required for compensation under the FCC’s Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) Fund, subject to further verification against TRS standards.
