A recent study by Fortune magazine stated that AI search engines are confidently wrong over 60% of the time, with various widely-used AI tools exhibiting significantly high error rates. This trend often extends to AI-generated captions, as run-on sentences, misheard phrases, and dialogues compressed into an incomprehensible stream of text may be familiar features across digital platforms. While some viewers may perceive this as a minor frustration, others who depend on captions entirely to access information and professional opportunities might be left without clarity.
“Accuracy and quality matter,” says Gay Cordova, founder of CCTubes, a human-created captioning and accessibility service for online videos and other various forms of online content. “If you want your message to get across, you need those two things.” From her perspective, reliance on captions has grown in popularity, not only among those who require it from a physiological standpoint, but also among general users who seek precision.
Cordova entered the captioning profession in 2005 after working as a court reporter, bringing with her a discipline embedded in linguistic efficiency. At that time, approximately 75% of broadcast content was required to be captioned; within a few years, Cordova highlights how that requirement expanded to full coverage. Today, the sheer proliferation of streaming services, corporate webinars, online learning environments, and live digital events has created an unprecedented demand for captioning across industries.
“Captions are no longer just for the few; they're now a universal accessibility issue,” she says. According to her, that universality extends beyond the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. The World Health Organization has revealed that more than one billion young people worldwide are at risk of hearing loss due to prolonged exposure to unsafe listening practices. Partial hearing loss, combined with inconsistent audio quality and varied accents, can make comprehension challenging for a growing segment of the population.
“I've noticed that even people without hearing loss use captions,” Cordova says. “If you're in a noisy environment or the audio isn't clear, you turn them on.”
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According to Cordova, captions now support viewers in offices, public transport, shared living spaces, and multilingual households. They can reinforce understanding and improve retention. Yet as demand has intensified, Cordova observes that many organizations have turned to AI as a primary solution. Automation can deliver speed and scale, and Cordova acknowledges its appeal. The issue, she argues, lies in performance standards.
“As a captioner, I have to maintain 98% accuracy,” she says. “I've observed that AI may not meet that standard of precision. Imagine relying completely on captions and missing so much of the information. Missing a modifier can alter instructions, and absent punctuation can obscure tone and structure altogether.”
Furthermore, she points to strong regional accents or specialized jargon that may challenge automated systems and get lost in translation, particularly in live environments.
In corporate training courses, compliance briefings, or academic lectures, such distortions, she emphasizes, can compromise effectiveness and inclusion. “If someone hard of hearing reads the captions that persistently leave out key words, that can be detrimental to their performance. It's not okay to make anyone feel like they don't know what's going on,” she shares.
Her work with deaf students and professionals underscores the human dimension of that reality. “They are so thankful,” she shares. “Every class, they say, ‘Thank you for coming and helping me.' They have been forgotten in many spaces.”
In her view, human captioners can contribute more than verbatim transcription. They can interpret context and tone, identify speakers, apply punctuation strategically, and resolve ambiguity in real-time. They can understand industry vocabulary and cultural nuance. According to her, such an interpretive layer can transform captions into a meaningful channel of communication.
Emphasizing its benefits, Cordova positions quality captioning as a strategic investment for creators. She insists that captions can enhance search engine optimization by integrating spoken content as text, improve viewer engagement and watch time, and extend global reach through translation workflows. In that process, Cordova highlights that they can reinforce brand credibility. “When you caption your content, it's done once, and it can be replayed forever,” she explains. “It may cost more upfront, but you reap the rewards.”
The broader conversation, in her view, concerns responsibility. From her perspective, captioning represents a commitment to ensuring that communication reaches its full audience with integrity, and at a time when rapid production can be increasingly accessible, comprehension, she argues, demands standards that prioritize clarity alongside efficiency.
Now, through CCTubes, Gay Cordova advocates for a model that integrates technological advancement with human expertise to ensure that, as content ecosystems expand, accessibility and accuracy remain central to how organizations communicate, educate, and build trust.