In the pre-pandemic world, virtual events and conferences were an afterthought - something of a novelty for those select few tech savvy folks with an appetite for niche avenues of communication.
Fast forward to present day and event and meeting platforms like Zoom and Cisco Webex have become ubiquitous in our professional endeavors and workflows. Who would have thought that in as little as one year, virtual meetings and conferences would emerge as a mainstay for countless industries and professionals alike. To put it in perspective, In Q2 2020, Zoom joined Pokémon GO and TikTok as the only appsto be installed over 300 million times in a single quarter. As of the same point, 700,000 businesses used Zoom.
Grand View Research projects that in the next decade, virtual events will grow from $78 billion to $774 billion or 10% year-over-year as industries battle to save money,adhere to mandated safety standards and the like. As a result, event platforms are a hot commodity for investors and these companies are raising tens of millions of dollars to remain relevant and at the cutting edge.
What do all of these changes mean in the grand scheme of things? Well, for one, as organizations make the shift to all virtual formats, it is crucial to factor in language interpretation to account for a broader, truly global market. Participants are no longer limited to their zip codes, so to speak. AI translation has come a long way and can be deployed effectively for live meetings, provided of course the source input is human. That is because human generated captions yield the most accurate AI translations. Among languages most requested, Italian and German made it into the top six, although English and Spanish are still at the top of the rankings, respectively. As you dive deeper into the analysis, we see more languages are requested for meetings and sessions with Chinese, Italian, and German being widely requested.
SyncWords’ Live captioning and translation services have seen a big demand from live event companies and customers looking for a solution to added captions and translations to their virtual conferences. While SyncWords Live can be used as a primary tool to help deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences, meeting Section 508 compliance, accessibility is for everyone and that includes virtual conference participants from all over the world.
Learn more about how Syncwords Live can help add accessibility and real-time translation for your next virtual event: Live captions for virtual events
