We accept payment via credit card online or over the phone, PayPal, bank transfer via BACS, or wire transfer. For institutionally-funded clients, we will need to either be an existing approved supplier or need to get set up as a new approved supplier, and obtain a Purchase Order (PO) to ensure the institution approves payment for the booking. For institutionally-funded projects of over £500, processing will begin once we've got a PO confirmed and in hand.

Absolutely! We frequently offer quotations in support of grant or other funding applications (and for what it's worth, our clients tell us that including us on their applications can help boost their rankings for 'social value'!).

It depends. For a majority of institutionally-funded projects, universities will require that we obtain approved (aka 'preferred') supplier status, and that any project bookings have a formal Purchase Order (PO) attached before accepting our invoices for the project. We're approved suppliers at institutions all over the UK and US, so we're very familiar with completing the process. Some universities, schools and departments, however, are happy to pay us by departmental credit card without going through the approved supplier process. And, of course, we often work with independent or self-funding researchers, where there's no requirement for institutional payment.

Absolutely, and often! We work with independent researchers, as well as those within or subcontracting to charitable organisations, social enterprises, museum and heritage institutions, and independent content creators too.

While the vast majority of our work comes from academic research projects, we work with anyone who needs high-quality transcription or closed captions for whatever purpose. We've supported numerous non-academic research projects by artists, museum curators, or advocacy organisations. We've also worked with non-research projects, like author dictated manuscripts for romance novels, captioning video content for arts and advocacy projects. We're happy to support all of it!

14 days is our standard turnaround time for transcription services, except for larger projects where we offer batched delivery over multiple weeks. We do offer faster turnaround services of 7 days, or less than 5 days, for additional fees. And while we know some competitors offer 24 or 48 hour turnaround times, because of our social mission and team demographic, prioritising near-immediate turnaround times isn't hugely consistent with working with primarily disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent freelancers.

We don't think so, but it really depends on what you value and where you want to spend your time, money and resources.

Research-specialist transcription services understand the research process from the inside and out, as well as bringing subject- and discipline-specific knowledge and expertise to our transcript production processes. This means we're more likely to produce analysis-ready transcripts that get specialist terminology right the first time, as well as producing transcripts that are NVivo and archive-ready.

While automated alternatives might get you transcripts quicker, they can't read for context, need additional training for specialist terminology, and can never replicate the enthusiasm that subject-specialist research-experienced transcribers and editors can bring to supporting your projects.

Not at all. We know how common it is for research funding to come with 'use it or lose it' rules that mean the funds must be applied within a certain financial year, and how sometimes that just doesn't match your research timelines, especially if you've been delayed relative to your initial plans. We offer payment in advance for up to 12 months on account, to enable you to allocate your hard-won funds to transcription support while reclaiming some much needed time and breathing room to progress your qualitative data collection.

You can certainly use automated transcription or closed-captioning services to obtain transcripts or closed captions. Will it produce an output equivalent in quality to what our team can produce? We don't think so. We regularly edit automated transcripts so know first-hand what their level of quality or accuracy looks like, and as far as we're concerned? It's never as good as what 100% human-done transcription and editing can produce.

Absolutely. We regularly edit AI-generated transcripts or captions produced in Zoom, Teams, Otter AI, YouTube, Vimeo or other automated platforms. Tell us about your project below, and we'll be happy to send you a free, no-obligation quotation.

We know that budgets can be really tight, both because of shifting landscapes of academic funding and university procurement policies, and because we regularly support projects by junior (PhD, ECR), independent, or otherwise under-funded scholars and researchers.

Because of our social mission, we're always happy to work with you to negotiate on costs, to do what we can to support you to stretch your budget as far as possible, and help you to access high-quality, 100% human-done transcription or closed-captioning support.

We think so. Accessibility can be the difference between some of your audience being able to engage your content, or trying and failing to engage it, inevitably leading to experiences of frustration and exclusion.

Around 20-25% of the population globally are disabled, and while not all of those people will have diverse access needs that affect their ability to read text, listen to podcasts, or watch videos, many will.

By investing in accessibility measures like closed-captions and even transcripts for video and audio content, you signal to your audiences that you're serious about inclusion, and understand the wide range of experiences that they bring as they try to engage your content, not all of which will be even about disability, chronic illness or neurodivergence.

If you need more time to decide before booking, then we respect and support your need to do that, and we'll be here whenever you're ready to answer any questions about our services, about the process of booking with us, and about the end results you can expect upon delivery and project wrap-up.

We're also working hard to support our clients by following up with recent inquiries, as we know things can get so busy its easy for progressing your research to fall by the wayside, and we don't ever take it personally if you don't reply to us for a while.

When it comes to accessibility, we know that audiences with diverse access needs take the presence or absence of high-quality closed-captions created in accordance with standard accessibility guidelines as a sign of whether you've recognised that your audience includes disabled people, and whether you respect them enough to invest in their having an experience at parity with their non-disabled peers.

Beyond audience perspective, there are other great reasons to invest in closed captions. For one thing, having an accurate text-based version of your video and audio content can be great for everything from SEO to content creation. In research contexts, having an accurate text-based version of your video and audio content can enable researchers to more easily access your materials, and provides text-based search functionality unavailable with just video or audio alone.