IBM unveils Web captioning service

IBM Global Services announced a new service Monday to provide automatic captioning of Web conferences and other online audio for the hearing impaired. Web sites that subscribe to the service would include a button that links to IBM's "Caption Me Now" feature for any audio content they post. The service, which uses audio decoding algorithms developed by IBM researchers, then provides live text translation of the audio.

IBM, which is demonstrating the technology this week at the International Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities in Southern California, is promoting the service as a way for government sites to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and to make corporate Web conferencing more accessible.