Case Study: Tolkchat achieves reliable, low-latency remote captioning with Pusher Channels

Realtime captioning for remote accessibility with Tolkchat

Tolkchat, a remote captioning delivery system serving deaf and hard-of-hearing users, needed a way to provide accurate, real-time transcripts across unstable remote connections. They had been using a polling approach that created heavy server load and slow, unreliable delivery, so Tolkchat adopted Pusher Channels (a WebSocket-based service from Pusher) to separate audio and text channels and deliver captions more reliably.

By switching to Pusher Channels, Tolkchat streams the last 5,000 characters of text continuously to clients so readers can follow even if connections drop; the WebSocket setup dramatically reduced server load and cut round-trip time by more than 70%. Pusher’s solution improved real-time reliability and responsiveness, enabling more accessible remote communication for Tolkchat’s users.

Tolkchat

David Van Der Staak

Creator