A method and system for providing captioned telephone service, the method comprising the steps of, initiating a first captioned telephone service call, during the first captioned telephone service call, creating a first set of captions using a call assistant, simultaneous with creating the first set of captions using a call assistant, creating a second set of captions using an automated speech recognition engine, comparing the first set of captions and the second set of captions using a scoring algorithm based on errors between the first and second sets of captions to generate a score for the second set of captions, in response to the score being within a predetermined threshold range, continuing the call using only the automated speech recognition engine to generate text and in response to the score being outside of the predetermined threshold range, continuing the call using a call assistant to generate captions.

A captioning relay for captioning hearing user (HU) voice signals comprising a plurality of separate captioning resources and a captioning administrator module that receives HU voice signal segments corresponding to a plurality of separate ongoing calls between HUs and AUs and provides the voice signal segments in a first in, first out order to the captioning resources, the administrator module providing each voice signal segment from each call to any one of the captioning resources to be captioned without regard to which captioning resource captioned prior voice signal segments generated during the call and, the administrator module further receiving caption segments back from the captioning resources and providing those captioning segments to AU devices associated with the calls that generated corresponding HU voice signal segments, and wherein the number of captioning resources is less than the number of ongoing calls.

An assisted user's (AU's) captioning device for assisting an AU during a call with a hearing user (HU) wherein the hearing user uses a HU's communication device, the captioning device comprising a display screen and a processor linked to the display screen, the processor programmed to perform the steps of upon receiving a call, automatically determining if the call is from one of a first set of HUs, upon determining that the call is from one of the first set of HUs, automatically initiating captioning and presenting captions of an HU voice signal during at least a portion of the call, and upon determining that the call is not from one of the first set of HUs, starting the call without captioning and providing an option to the AU to initiate captioning during the call.

A method to transcribe communications includes the steps of obtaining a plurality of hypothesis transcriptions of a voice signal generated by a speech recognition system, determining consistent words that are included in at least first and second of the plurality of hypothesis transcriptions, in response to determining the consistent words, providing the consistent words to a device for presentation of the consistent words to an assisted user, and presenting the consistent words via a display screen on the device, wherein a rate of the presentation of the words on the display screen is variable.

A captioning method for presenting captions to an assisted user (AU) during communication with a hearing user (HU) where the assisted user uses a captioned device and the hearing user uses a hearing user's device to facilitate the communication, the captioned device including a display screen and a speaker for presenting captions and broadcasting the hearing user's voice signals, respectively, the method comprising the steps of during an ongoing call between the AU and the HU, using an automated speech recognition (ASR) engine to generate initial ASR captions associated with the HU's voice signal, assessing at least one caption quality factor associated with prior initial ASR captions generated during the ongoing call, delaying broadcast of HU voice signal to the AU and based on the at least one caption quality factor, adjusting a duration of the HU voice signal broadcast delay.

A method may include obtaining a first audio signal including first speech originating at a remote device during a communication session between the remote device and a communication device and obtaining a second audio signal including second speech originating at the communication device during the communication session between the remote device and the communication device. The method may also include obtaining a characteristic of the communication session from one or more of: the first audio signal, the second audio signal, and settings of the communication device and determining a hearing level of a user of the communication device using the characteristic of the communication session.

A captioning relay for captioning hearing user (HU) voice signals comprising a plurality of separate captioning resources and a captioning administrator module that receives HU voice signal segments corresponding to a plurality of separate ongoing calls between HUs and AUs and provides the voice signal segments in a first in, first out order to the captioning resources, the administrator module providing each voice signal segment from each call to any one of the captioning resources to be captioned without regard to which captioning resource captioned prior voice signal segments generated during the call and, the administrator module further receiving caption segments back from the captioning resources and providing those captioning segments to AU devices associated with the calls that generated corresponding HU voice signal segments, and wherein the number of captioning resources is less than the number of ongoing calls.