internet captioning for people with hearing loss
Captioning on the Internet? You
bet! Now that there is so much audio and streaming video on the
Internet, captions are required to provide communications access to
people with hearing loss. The bad news is that there is a lot of content
out there that is not captioned. The good news is that there's much more
captioned content now than there was even a few months ago, and
captioned content will continue to increase.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2013 - Another Milestone Coming for
Internet TV Captioning
December 2012 - Amazon Cited for Failing
to Provide Internet Captioning
December 2012 - New Captioning Rules to
Take Effect
October 2012 - FCC Requirements for
Captioning of Internet Video Programming
October 2012 - Amazon Begins Captioning Streaming Video
Library
October 2012 - Netflix and NAD Agree to 100%
Captioning on Streaming Content
October 2012 - Hearing loss advocate says new
captioning rules fall short
Sept 2012 - Online Coverage of Political Conventions
Lacks Captioning
August 2012 - FCC Requires Online TV Content to be
Captioned Starting in September 2012
July 2012 - Closed Captioning Not Provided on Streaming
Media
July 2012 - Captioning of Internet Video Programming
June 2012 - Netflix may have to provide closed captions
online
June 2012 - Federal Court Ruling May Require Netflix
Streaming Captions
April 2012 - Compliance Deadlines Set for FCC Online
Video Closed Captioning Rules
April 2012 - New Closed Captioning Software for
Ultraviolet Disc-To-Digital Video
March 2012 - YouTube Improves Captions
March 2012 - Technology Encourages Captioning Service
for College Campuses
March 2012 - CNN Must Face Lawsuit on Captioned Online
Videos
January 2012 - FCC Releases Television IP Captioning
Rules
October 2011 - Court Reporters Push for Higher
Standards in Internet Captioning
July 2011 - It's Easier Now for Federal Agencies
to Provide Captioning
June 2011 - NAD Files Disability Civil
Rights Lawsuit Against Netflix
May 2011 - SMPTE Makes Closed-Captioning
Standard Freely Available
March 2011 - Zediva Introduces Online Movie
Rental Service for New Releases
October 2010 -
Court Reporters Ready to Help with
Closed Captioning for New Disability Act
January 2010 - YouTube Adds Automatic "Captioning"
January 2010 - Captioned Internet Videos -- An
Emerging Issue and Initial Success
November 2009 - Google and YouTube: Leading the Way
for Internet Captioning
July 2009 - COAT Applauds Representative
Markey's Accessibility Bill
September 2008 - Captioned YouTube?
September 2008 - American Experience "The
Presidents" Downloads have Closed Captioning and Video Description
August 2008 - YouTube Has Speech-to-Text
Functionality...and it Works
June 2008 - Goldberg Testimony on Markey Bill
June 2008 - 21st Century Communications and
Video Accessibility Act Introduced
June 2008 - Markey
Bill Explained in Simple Language
May 2008 - DigitalChalk
Partners with IBM to Automate Closed Captioning for Video Training
March 2008 - CNET Unveils CNET TV 2.0 With Closed
Captioning
March 2008 - XOrbit Announces Direct-to-MPEG
Closed Captioning Solution
March 2008 - Captioned Web Videos from BBC
December 2007 - Tom Harkin's web videos to be
captioned!
December 2007 - Proposed Legislation
Promotes Accessibility
October 2007 - Organizations Promote Online Media
Captions
March 2007 - WGBH
Creates Tool For Captioning Flash Media
March 2007 - Automatic Sync Technologies Makes
Captioning Easy for Adobe Flash
July 2006 - Guidelines for Creating Accessible
Digital Materials Published by WGBH/NCAM
July 2006 - AOL Announces Closed Captions for
Online Video
March 2006 - Here's
Cheryl Heppner's great article on captioning Internet video.
January 2006 - If you think that captioning on
the Internet is not an important issue, you should read this post from
Jamie Berke, who hosts the About:Deafness/HOH site.
November 2005 - The disability community has a long history of
fighting for access in the fields of telecommunications, television,
etc; and it has done a remarkable job of ensuring that access is
required. Now, however, many of these services are moving to the
Internet, where there none of the existing legislation applies. Here's
a press release from the NAD that discusses this critical issue!
October 2003 - Here's a report on the Captioning
on the Internet workshop at the 2003 TDI Convention. The presenter
was Linda Idoni, the director of the West Coast office of the Media
Access Group (MAG) at WGBH.
October 2003 - AOL has just announced that they will
be captioning some of their streaming media. This is wonderful news
for people with hearing loss. Hopefully other content providers
will follow suit.
October 2003 - OK, so we're seeing some progress on ensuring that
multimedia on the internet is captioned. But what about eBooks?
Here's
the latest on eBook accessibility!
September 2003 - So what's up with Multimedia
on the Web? Is it going to be accessible to people with hearing
loss? Judy Brewer, the Director of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
at the WWW Consortium (W3C) gives us her thoughts.
December 2002 - The Captioned Media Program announces
Captioned
Educational Streaming Video on the Internet. Now you can visit their
website and view captioned educational videos RIGHT NOW!
October 2002 - Court Rules Web Need Not be
Accessible - This article is about a court decision that websites
need not be accessible to the blind, but the same reasoning applies to
captioning Internet videos.
November 2001 - e-Media and Wordwave cooperate to provide captions
on live webcasts.
July 2001 - MovieFlix and the Captioned Media Program
are working to add captions to the streaming internet movies provided by
MovieFlix. So if you have a reasonably fast connection, you can now view
captioned streaming movies over the internet.
January 2001 - If you're interested in the upcoming inauguration ball, and
are concerned that lack of captioning will make it inaccessible to you,
you might want to watch it on the web. TVWorldwide.com recently
announced
that they will provide captioned streaming video coverage of
that event.
October 2000 - One of the recent developments on the
internet is the advent of captioned videos. An organization called
AbleTV is now providing captioned videos of
news events.
July 2000 - People with hearing loss find instant
messaging to be a great resource, because you can use it despite your
hearing loss. Or at least, you could. Read about Voice-Enabled
Instant Messaging from Microsoft.
April 2000 - The FCC provided internet captioning for
their April 28th public forum. How did they
do it and how successful was it?
November 1999 - Sign World TV is
an innovative organization that
"broadcasts" over the Internet, and all their programming is
both captioned and interpreted.
WGBH in Boston has developed software that allows folks
to caption videos in a variety of formats. And it's available for the
very favorable price of FREE. Here's MAGpie.
More on this and
related topics
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2013
First, a quick reminder: Next month is a very
important milestone for internet captioning law. By March 30, 2013, live
and near-live video programming must be captioned online if it is shown on
regular TV. The exact language from the Federal Communications Commission
consumer guide is reproduced below:
"Live and near-live video programming must be
captioned on the Internet if it is shown on TV with captions on or after
March 30, 2013. Near-live video programming is defined as programming that
is performed and recorded less than 24 hours before being shown on TV for
the first time."
An example of this type of programming is Dateline
NBC. Dateline NBC is partially live, and the captioning is done live on
regular television.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
December 2012
Today several deaf and hard of hearing consumer
groups filed a complaint at the FCC against Amazon for allegedly violating
new FCC Internet captioning requirements. These consumers aver that
Amazon.com has violated numerous times the FCC's new rules issued under
the 21st CVAA. Television shown online without the captioning included top
programs such as "Fringe," "CSI: NY," "Law and Order: Special Victims
Unit," and "Revolution." The new rules state that beginning on September
30, 2012, most full-length, non-live video programming published or
exhibited on television with captions must also include closed captions
when delivered online. They say that Amazon has consistently failed to
caption its online video programming in a timely fashion, sometimes taking
more than twenty days after posting a program online to provide captions.
The complaint urged the FCC to impose the maximum fines and injunctive
sanctions on Amazon to ensure that other distributors will make their
programming accessible immediately instead of violating the rules as a
cost of doing business. The consumer complaint also noted the willful
nature of Amazon's failure to caption these previously-captioned programs
on TV; they reminded the FCC that the company was a participant in the
FCC's own Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee ("VPAAC")
which met repeatedly after passage of the new law in 2010 to develop
standards for how to implement IP captioning, so any defense of lack of
awareness or of insufficient time was not appropriate.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
December 2012
FCC rules require that, as of March 30, 2013, TV
broadcasters must begin providing Closed Captions on programs that are
streamed live (or "near-live") on the internet simultaneously as they air
on television. This rule, for example, would affect stations that live
stream their daily news casts. This requirement was adopted by the FCC as
a result of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video
Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA.) In January 2012, the FCC adopted rules
implementing the CVAA's provisions governing Internet Protocol (IP) closed
captioning. Among other things, these rules established deadlines for
captioning of IP programming that first aired on television with captions.
The Rules apply to full length programs only, not clips. The first
deadline was September 30, 2012 for pre-recorded programming not edited
for IP distribution. March 30, 2013 is the deadline for captioning of live
or near-live programming and for pre-recorded programming edited for
Internet distribution the deadline is September 30, 2013. There are also
deadlines for archived IP programming stretching out to March 2016 that
must be captioned once those programs air on TV with captions.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October 2012
Amazon has quietly started to add closed
captioning services to its Instant Video library, following a September 30
deadline from the Federal Communications Commission that required online
media companies to begin incorporating these subtitles for the hard of
hearing into their video content. This regulation - an implementation of
the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2011 - has
been long in the making, with companies like Amazon and YouTube but also
Apple arguing that they will need extensions to fully comply, and those
arguing on behalf of people with hearing disabilities saying that digital
content needs to be just as accessible as what people can see in analog.
The September 30 deadline is the first in a series for closed caption
compliance.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October 2012
Many deaf
activists are calling the new Federal Communication Commission (FCC)
rulings on closed captioning a step forward, but complain that there are
too many loopholes, says the Washington Times. The 21st Century
Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) requires producers to
add closed captioning to TV and website programming for people with
hearing loss.
Some of
the issues are:
* The new
closed captioning law requirements only apply to regular, full-length
television shows on TV or the Internet
* The law
does not apply to Internet shows on websites such as Hulu News
*
Broadcasters must caption full-length newscasts on TV or live streams but
are not required to caption short video clips
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sept 2012
Online streaming was supposed to make the 2012
conventions more accessible to the public than ever before. But for the 48
million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing, the latest technology
isn't quite as good as ordinary TV. No major media outlets provided live
online closed captioning of the Republican National Convention this week
in Tampa, Fla. At the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.,
the only Internet feed that will carry real-time captioning will be the
Democratic Party's own online hub. Unlike on television, where outlets are
required by law to encode subtitles, Internet content providers don't have
to do the same - even if it's the same material shown with captions on TV.
"We believe that this content should be captioned and we encourage our
consumers to advocate for closed captioning because it is the right thing
to do," two leading advocates wrote to POLITICO in a statement.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 2012
TV networks and web video sites will have to start
providing closed captions for any TV content available online by the end
of September, the FCC ruled a few days ago. The ruling reaffirmed the
Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010,
which was signed into law by President Obama in October of 2010, as well
as an FCC ruling from earlier this year. However, the industry got a bit
of a break, with the FCC ruling that they won't have to provide
customizable captions until early 2014. Captions for web video have been a
bit of a hot button issue for some time: Disability advocates have been
arguing that web video providers aren't doing enough to make their clips
accessible to disabled viewers, and have actually sued both CNN and
Netflix over missing captions.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
July 2012
Back in February 2011, Netflix said "subtitles"
were available on 3,500 TV episodes and movies, which together account for
roughly 30 percent of the site's available viewing. The company said it
expected to reach 80 percent of viewing coverage by the end of 2011-but it
does not appear to have updated subscribers on its progress toward this
goal in the 17 months since. (Shows with subtitles are listed on this not
terribly user-friendly page.) The problem is the subtitles are visible on
computers and on devices such as phones and tablets but not on all gadgets
that stream Netflix output to your television.*The issue is technical, the
company claims. It's the "closed" part of the name-the ability to choose
whether the captions are visible-that makes it tricky. Computers-and
devices like iPhones and iPads-can handle the complex "encoding" software,
whereas smart TVs and set-top boxes may or may not have the processing
power to do so. (Hulu users are in the same fix. Closed captions are
available on "some" of its shows for online viewing and via a limited
number of Internet-connected devices.)
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June 2012
A federal judge has taken a step toward requiring
Netflix to provide closed-captioning for the deaf on its video-streaming
website, ruling that federal disability laws cover businesses that serve
their customers online. Netflix, headquartered in Los Gatos, is the
dominant provider of movies and TV programs on the Internet, with more
than 20 million subscribers. The National Association for the Deaf accused
the company of violating the law by withholding closed-captioning from
most of the videos on its "Watch Instantly" on-demand website. Netflix
sought to dismiss the suit, arguing that the Americans with Disabilities
Act requires accommodations for the disabled only in stores and other
physical structures - an argument accepted in the past by some courts,
including the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. On
Tuesday, however, U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor of Springfield,
Mass., said the law prohibits discrimination in any venue, including the
Internet.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2012
A California judge has rejected CNN's attempt to
dismiss a lawsuit brought by The Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness
(GLAD) over the news organization's refusal to caption videos uploaded to
its website. CNN raised a First Amendment objection to the suit, opening
up an intriguing battle. On one side, a media organization's unequivocal
right to free speech. On the other, the plaintiffs' incontrovertible right
to have equal access to the product of free speech. GLAD sued in June,
prompting CNN to file an anti-SLAPP motion. Under California's anti-SLAPP
statute, defendants are allowed to strike a complaint if the lawsuit is an
attempt to interfere with the furtherance of free speech on a matter of
public interest. CNN argued that all of its activities as a news agency
are in furtherance of its free speech rights. GLAD objected. The group
said it would be one thing if this was a libel or privacy case. But to
interpret the anti-SLAPP statute this broadly, the group argued, would
mean a pass from legal obligations "whenever the defendant is a news
corporation or when defendant's acts are in any way connected to speech."
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
April 2012
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Report
and Order (R&O) on Closed Captioning of Internet-Protocol-Delivered Video
Programming appeared today in the Mar. 30, 2012 Federal Register. As
described in our Closed Captioning Rules for Online Video Programming
advisory, Federal Register publication of the R&O starts the clock toward
compliance deadlines for certain of the new rules for the closed
captioning of video programming delivered via Internet protocol (i.e., IP
video), as required by the 21st Century Communications and Video
Accessibility Act (CVAA). As discussed in our advisory on the CVAA and
our overview of the Report by the Video Programming Accessibility Advisory
Committee (VPAAC) making recommendations for FCC implementation, the CVAA
compelled the FCC to adopt rules that require captioning of IP video
programming that was published or exhibited with captions on TV after the
effective date of such regulations (covered IP video). Publication of the
R&O in the Federal Register establishes Apr. 30, 2012 as the effective
date for the rules adopted therein. Thus, any video programming that
appears on television with captions after Apr. 30, 2012, is covered IP
video. Federal Register publication of the R&O also sets the deadlines for
ensuring that such covered IP video appears online with captions as
follows:
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2012
Captions on YouTube videos can't be all that
exciting. It's been around since 2006. But apparently caption
functionality has been widely extended, according to a blog post by
YouTube. The video sharing platform that takes up half the work day for
most of us has introduced new languages to YouTube's caption feature.
Automatic captions and transcript synchronization are now available for
Japanese, Korean and English, and there are over 155 supported languages
for manual captions and subtitles. YouTube rentals will also start telling
you what subtitles are available to you before you rent. Channel owners
will also now have support for their chosen format when it comes to
broadcast video captions. In other words, text will be seen in its
original position and style, and can be placed near the speaker,
italicized to indicate off-camera voice over, or even set to scroll if the
captions were generated in real-time model. Of course, we're looking for
videos on YouTube more often than we're posting them (in most cases). That
said, YouTube has added a new search option for closed captions. Simply
add ", cc" to any search or click Filter > CC.
Full Story
