This year, Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) tried something brand new to make our presence at the Minnesota State Fair extra special: we worked on sharing a small part of STEM Day at the Fair with our online audience through Facebook Live.

Facebook initially launched its live streaming service on April 6, 2016. While it has a demonstrated success in engaging online audiences in live discussions, performances, and presentations, it is not in itself a fully accessible platform. Facebook has only recently (as of June 6, 2017) launched an effort to work compatibly with third-party closed captioning services on Facebook Live videos.

Wading into uncharted territory, the MNIT Communications Team partnered with the Office of Accessibility to give everyone in our online audience a Facebook Live experience. We coordinated with the Office of Governor Mark Dayton to issue a Proclamation for STEM Day at the Fair, and we planned to broadcast Facebook Live complete with real-time captioning as Assistant Commissioner Jenna Covey presented the Proclamation on the Dan Patch Park Stage at the State Fair around 11:45am on August 24, 2017.

We learned a lot along the way, and though the process was not simple, we succeeded in producing a short live video of the proclamation presentation with real-time captions. When connectivity issues cut our livestream short, we took video to upload, and added captions afterwards. Below is a short description of some of the work we did to prepare for our Facebook Live event. If this piques your interest, please check back in to our blog post next week! We plan to publish a toolkit to help you plan your Facebook Live event and make sure the broadcast is accessible and successful.

Planning Ahead:

Captioning

To ensure that everyone could enjoy the live experience, we needed to make captioning a priority. Although there are ways to caption Facebook Live events, they all require streaming from a desktop-generated feed. Currently, there is no solution to captioning a video generated from a phone. Because we intended to use a phone to capture video for this particular event, we needed to find workaround solutions that, while not optimal, ensured access. We worked with a captioning services company to provide captions as the event was occurring. The caption writer worked remotely – viewing the video on her personal Facebook Page and keeping in touch via email and cellphone during the entire process.

The captioning company provided us with a URL that we could paste into the Facebook Live post. The link would open up a separate webpage that would show real-time captions. The user would view the webpage showing the Facebook Live broadcast and the webpage with the captions side-by-side in two separate browser windows. Though this was not ideal, this is how we resolved some of the captioning limitations of streaming video from an iPhone.

To assist our caption writer for the event, we sent her some of the language we planned to use a day before the Facebook Live event. When she had a hard time hearing, she was able to follow along with some of the text and fill in any gaps that she missed while she was listening for the audio.

Sound Control

We knew that we would run into challenges streaming live video from the Minnesota State Fair, a location that is crowded, loud, and outdoors. Although those presenting the proclamation would be speaking into a microphone, we were unsure how clear the sound would come through an iPhone 6s’s audio input (we planned to use an iPhone 6s to capture the video), and we were unsure how any weather conditions (wind, etc.) would affect the audio.

Ideally, we hoped to connect the iPhone to an external microphone in order to input direct audio into the stream. We wanted our online audience and our caption writer to be able to hear what was happening clearly in the live video. We hoped to find a Bluetooth wireless microphone that we could use to input audio, but as we did more research, we learned that Facebook Live was incompatible with Bluetooth microphone audio input.

We did further research to find cables that would connect the iPhone to an external microphone, which we could station near the speakers for the Proclamation Presentation. We tried several different adapters and cables, but unfortunately, none of them were able to input external audio into the iPhone’s headphone jack, and we began to run out of time to keep looking for more solutions. After doing a Facebook Live test outside with the iPhone’s built in microphone, we decided to simply shoot the live video with the iPhone’s microphone. We knew the quality would not be perfect, but we were satisfied that the sound system on stage at Dan Patch Park would amplify the presenter’s voices to rise above some of the State Fair noise.

To ensure that our caption writer could hear and accurately capture the words being said on stage in a timely manner, we took an extra step. We used a cellphone to call her during the event, and we placed the cellphone near the stage speakers so she could reliably hear what was happening during the planned video stream. She could watch the video on our Facebook Page and add captions to what she heard on the phone.

Testing

We did several tests in the weeks leading up to the Minnesota State Fair to ensure that the Facebook Live camera operator could smoothly set up the Facebook Live broadcast from her iPhone, the captioning services would work well with live video, and the sound we had would be good quality.

Test #1: Test with captioning service and Facebook Live broadcast. MNIT’s Communications and Public Affairs Liaison, Emily Shimkus, attempted to make a Facebook Live broadcast featuring Jay Wyant from the Office of Accessibility. Emily Shimkus stood about 12 feet away from Jay Wyant to take the video, and he spoke to our caption writer with his cellphone. The caption writer picked up audio from him directly, rather than from the livestream to avoid big delays in streaming. While the captioning successfully appeared in the captioning web link, a third party who was trying to view the Facebook Live broadcast remotely did not receive a notification of the live broadcast from Facebook and could not locate the live broadcast in her newsfeed or on Emily Shimkus’s personal Facebook Page (where the test was being broadcast with a limited audience).

Test #2: Short private test without captioning services, to ensure that the Facebook Live video would stream independently of captioning services. Emily Shimkus shot a personal Facebook Live broadcast from her cellphone around an indoor office in MNIT Central to check on video quality. After this test, we were confident in the steps to take to set up the Facebook Live broadcast on Emily Shimkus’ iPhone.

Test #3: Final test with the captioning service. We chose to broadcast directly from MNIT’s official Facebook Page, making it clear that the broadcast was a test. We shot the live broadcast outside, in similar conditions to what we anticipated we might have at the State Fair. Assistant Commissioner Jenna Covey stood outside the Capitol and announced that MNIT would be doing a special live broadcast from the Minnesota State Fair the following week. Our caption writer received her audio input from a cellphone near Assistant Commissioner Covey and was able to type the captions in real-time. After this test, we discovered that the captions did not stay up on the captioning web link after the broadcast was over. We realized that in order to make sure our Facebook Live videos had captions even after the broadcasts had finished, we needed to manually input a text file into the video through Facebook afterwards. We requested the text file from our caption writer and learned how to input the captions into the Facebook Live video after the broadcast was completed.

Streaming the Facebook Live Broadcast

At the Fair, Emily Shimkus placed herself near the stage to take video with her iPhone, and Jennie Delisi from the Office of Accessibility called our caption writer and placed her cellphone near one of the stage speakers.

Knowing the Minnesota State Fair Wi-Fi would be spotty, we planned to use cellphone data to stream the live video. Although Emily Shimkus had LTE data available, the amount of fairgoers in the vicinity using data made the connection unreliable. Around 15 -20 seconds after Cambray Crozier, MNIT’s Director of Communications, and Assistant Commissioner Jenna Covey took to the stage to present the Governor’s STEM Day at the Fair Proclamation, the live streamed video dropped. We posted the live video that we had captured, and because Emily Shimkus could not get a new live stream to start, she captured additional video on her cellphone to share later.

We asked Jeremy DePew, another member of MNIT’s communications team, to upload captions to the Facebook Live videos from his office at MNIT Central, which he did right after the live captions disappeared. We edited the original post to delete the captioning web URL (where the captions had disappeared) and we added language indicating that captions were coming soon. Once the captions were inputted directly into the videos already uploaded on to Facebook, we edited the posts again to remove the language about captions coming.

Had our Wi-Fi signal been strong and steady, the entire Facebook Live broadcast would have streamed successfully and accessibly.

Lessons Learned along the Way: What to do for a Successful, Captioned Facebook Live Video

Planning to livestream an event to social media is a lot of work, but by trying out several different options and ideas to enhance video quality and accessibility on social media, we’ve learned about the questions we need to ask to provide even better videos in the future. Below are some of the things that took our team by surprise as we made our first attempt at a fully accessible Facebook Live broadcast:

• Live Captioning does not archive the captions – they disappear right after the event/video/recording is over. You will need to ask the caption writer for a text file to upload captions after the video has gone live, and you will need to upload the captions manually to the videos if you choose to post them. We suggest that you make the text file request in advance when setting up the contract with the captioning services company.
• iPhones do not play well with other sound systems. If you want to use an external microphone for producing video, you might wish to consider streaming video from a computer, tablet, or other device that will easily input audio from an external microphone.
• While Facebook is supposed to notify your followers as you go live, it cannot be counted on to do so. The best way to ensure that people see your live video as it is happening is to give your audience a heads up the week before the live event takes place.
• Ensure that you are streaming in an area where you have access to trusty Wi-Fi. While there was Wi-Fi available at the Minnesota State Fair, the sheer volume of cellphone users on that system made it unreliable to use. Data was not much more reliable – there were simply too many people using their phones and using data at the State Fair for us to capture live video without it dropping.
• If you wish to broadcast Facebook Live from an organization’s Facebook Page, the organization’s Facebook Page must be verified.
• Facebook Live is not a spontaneous event – to use Facebook Live in an accessible way requires significant planning. Testing the video, sound, and streaming services is key to a successful broadcast.