Regarding transcripts and accessibility concerns

We’ve seen a lot of great discussion around audio transcripts in the MaxFun community, and we wanted to expand some on what we’ve learned and where we’re at. It is clear from some of the comments that there are people in the community who would appreciate having MaxFun podcasts in readable form, for a variety of reasons that we didn’t initially consider. We’re grateful to the folks who took their time to share their experiences and thoughts with us. The practical hurdles for getting transcripts for all of our shows remain – namely, the costliness of traditional approaches and the poor quality of automated transcription services. We’re currently reassessing our options here – technology is changing, and there are some new players in the market.

At the same time, we have to acknowledge two realities. The first is that we currently estimate a cost of upwards of $300,000 a year to support transcripts across all MaxFun shows. This isn’t an expense that MaxFun would be able to absorb at this point (and it isn’t a cost that we could pass on to the shows on the network). The second is that we’re still a small company, with a small staff. Investigating our options here will take time and energy, and we may not have an answer for you for some time. But we will come back to you with updates and the options we’re considering. We welcome feedback on this subject that you’d like to share; please email comments to concerns@maximumfun.org.

As always, thank you for your interest in and engagement with our shows!