A captioning campaigner is urging brands to be more aware of their standards of captioning on YouTube after a brand video for Telstra looked more like an ad for a sex toy on the site.

Michael Lockrey lodged a complaint with the telco after seeing the captions on the video for its wireless 4G mobile device which read “Like talking to settle my small sexually intimate me time” instead of “I don’t have to settle on my smartphone for all my internet needs when I’m out and about”.

Last year B&T revealed how many leading brands were not using captions on their adverts, missing out on a sizeable hearing impaired market.

According to Lockrey the problem has occurred because brands are relying on YouTube’s auto captions, which uses voice recognition technology to translate videos.

He told B&T: “It’s very frustrating for me personally as I'm always having to explain to people that, "Yes! Google is doing auto captioning using voice recognition. But no! That's not enough – it's usually just a starting point in the workflow, with further refinements needed etc".

“I certainly can't remember too many videos that I've watched on YouTube once I saw that they only had auto captioning.”

According to Google videos can be captioned by uploading scripts in multiple languages, or people can choose to use the auto captioning service, which it admits are not always accurate, but make it easier for companies to fix the captions.

Telstra has not responded to B&T's request for comment at the time of publication, but has since amended the video.

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