When the internet drops - Readout

Readout’s captions are made by a speech service in the cloud, which is fast and accurate. If the internet drops, they don’t stop:

Captions switch to a speech model running on the device itself, and the unfinished sentence is replayed into it, so nothing is lost.
When the connection comes back, captions switch back to the cloud at the next pause.

Captions made on the device are in English only, and a little slower and less accurate. On an older phone or computer without a usable graphics chip, a smaller model is used.

Phones used as microphones

Phones always caption through the cloud. If the internet drops, they stop, and the captioning device carries on with its own microphone, as long as captions are on there.

When Readout updates

When Readout puts out a new version, the server restarts for a few seconds. Nobody has to do anything: the device keeps what’s said during the gap and sends it on once it’s back, and TVs keep showing the captions meanwhile. Video calls carry on too. Open pages load the new version by themselves, at a moment that interrupts nobody.

If the speech service stops writing

If the speech service stops writing while people are still talking, Readout notices within about 20 seconds and starts it afresh, so captions carry on.