Captioning Providers to Form Trade Association

Editor: We've all been frustrated at times with television captioning of poor quality. As you may know, federal law dictates the amount of captioning that is required, but does not address captioning quality. As long as there's text showing up on your TV, the program is considered captioned. The captioning industry responded with the first Caption Quality Initiative (CQI) Conference last month. Here's the information as presented in TDI-L eNotes. A full report is available at http://tap.gallaudet.edu/CapQualReport.htm. BTW, if you're interested in captioning (and other telecommunications) issues, you might want to visit the TDI website (http://www.tdi-online.org) and subscribe to the free TDI-L eNotes.

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[TDI] Editor's note: TDI is a participant in this effort. Since its early years, TDI has been advocating on behalf of consumers for access to media. We at TDI are pleased and support the collaborative efforts by the captioning industry to further improve captioning quality and look forward to working with the new trade association.

CAPTIONING COMPANIES MEET, VOTE TO CREATE TRADE ASSOCIATION

Representatives of 18 different captioning companies from around the country met on September 14 in Fairfax, Virginia, with 30 consumers of captioning to hold the first-ever Caption Quality Initiative (CQI) Conference. It was the largest gathering of captioning professionals ever, and the first time in 8 years that more than 5 companies have met to discuss industry issues.

At the end of a full day of discussions and sharing information about the problems that service providers and consumers face in the preparation and delivery of captions, the group voted overwhelmingly to support the creation of a trade association. It is not yet clear whether this association will be independent or may be a separate interest group under the auspices of an existing association. There has never been a formal association representing the television captioning industry, which is now officially 30 years old (dating to the formation of The Caption Center at WGBH-TV in Boston).

Conferees were asked to recommend and then vote on possible next steps that the industry can take to solve the problems that affect the quality of captions consumers receive. The top three recommendations were: 1) create a trade association to serve the captioning industry, 2) encourage the FCC to be more proactive in ensuring compliance with its rules affecting program access, particularly those rules regarding emergency news reports and scheduled-program captioning, and 3) define a single point of contact for consumers and program providers when they have questions or concerns about captioning.

22 captioning service providers had been invited to attend the Conference and to bring with them their consumer advisors who already have a deep understanding of the issues confronting the captioning industry. A total of 79 people attended the historic event.

Although most participants were either service providers or consumers, there were a few special guests who participated in the Conference. These included Traci Randolph of the FCC's Disability Rights Office; Mark Golden, Executive Director of the National Court Reporters Association; and Dr. Judith Harkins, Director of Gallaudet's Technology Access Program. The co-chairs of the Conference were Jo Ann McCann from the U.S. Department of Education and Jeff Hutchins, former owner of VITAC and a veteran of three different captioning companies over the past 29 years.