Closed Captioning Blog

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the tentative agenda for the next FCC meeting, to be held on Thursday, March 3, 2011.  The second half of the meeting will deal with two provisions in the 21st Century Communications & Video Accessibility Act. The first will propose rules requiring providers of advanced communications services and manufacturers of equipment used for those services to make their products accessible to ...

In regards to the upcoming Read Across America Day (see: http://www.nea.org/readacross/), we thought it’d be a good idea to provide some more research and information on the idea of using closed captions to promote literacy. Television captions can be a valuable reading resource. It provides toddlers, preschoolers, struggling students, low literacy adults, and English language learners with the opportunity to connect spoken dialogue with the printed word. This is ...

The National Education Association sponsors an annual event called Read Across America on March 2, which happens to be Dr. Seuss’s birthday.  On this day, schools host Read Across America activities to encourage children of all ages to become excited about reading. It has grown into a nationwide event, with celebrities, politicians, and athletes joining in on the reading fun. In 2006, The National Association of the Deaf hosted ...

Closed captioning has never been easier or more personalized with the arrival of digital captions. With DIRECTV, you simply push the yellow button on the remote to turn on the captions or subtitles. (I prefer the subtitles because the font is yellow and easier for me to read.) Also, if you are sick of the white text in the big black box, you can now personalize your closed ...

Maybe not. It seems as though the 3D craze has not quite entered into domestic television sets as of yet. One reason could be the cost—they are still considerably more expensive than standard HD TVs. Many consumers are also bothered by the fact that you are required to wear 3D glasses and most need to be purchased separately. Another potential deterrent for many viewers is the lack of ...

When I first started working for Aberdeen Captioning, a company that offers closed captioning, subtitling, and translation services, I had never watched closed captions on television (except while in the gym!) and the only subtitles I had watched were during the few foreign films I had seen. However, after extensive training and years of experience, I am proud to call myself a seasoned caption editor. With my new ...

We’ve been blogging about this legislation for months, and the battle has been won!  President Obama signed the 21st Century Communications & Video Accessibility Act into law on Friday, October 8, 2010, during the National Disability Employment Awareness Month. This new legislation requires smart phones, television programs, emergency broadcast information, the Internet, menus on DVD players, program guides on cable TV,  and other communication devices  to be accessible ...

Want to help spread the word about the need for closed captions on the Internet? Become a fan of Caption Action 2 on Facebook.  This movement originated as “Caption Action” in the late 1980s and early 1990s in order to get closed captions on home videos. The new movement’s focus is to get legislation passed in Congress to mandate closed captioning on the Internet. So far, this has ...

YouTube now recognizes the need for online videos to be closed captioned and for that we say, “Hooray!” However, it is becoming increasingly clear that while their new automatic voice recognition software allows their videos to be quickly captioned, the technology still has its bugs and its accuracy leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, the actual errors are so great that it has now spawned tons ...

On the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 348 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted for HR 3101, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. This act will require closed captioning on all Internet video information and will help millions of people have access to these videos. This act will also provide up to $10 million annually for specialized communications equipment for low-income ...