Airborne Captions on a Handheld Device

Editor: After literally years of drought, it seems that the topic of providing communications access to people with hearing loss while traveling has become the "topic de jour". Here's news from WGBH and the IMS Company about captioning on a handheld device!

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June 2008

IFE solutions provider, The IMS Company, and the Media Access Group at WGBH in Boston, have developed a solution for the provisioning of closed-captioned media content on IMS' portable in-flight entertainment devices, it was announced today by Mary Watkins, the WGBH Media Access Group's director of communications, and IMS' vice president sales and marketing Harry Gray.

The initiative, the first use of closed-captions on an IFE portable, is intended to address the increased interest by airlines in providing closed-captioned media following the announcement by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in February 2006 that it planned to require airlines flying in and out of the United States to provide closed-caption capability on inflight media. "Providing a closed-caption service on portable media players is a solution that can now be implemented cost-effectively on a near-term basis," said Gray.

Closed caption content is expected to be deliverable to new portables customers on IMS' PAV-704 and PAV-705 platforms in October 2008, according Gray.

The solution involves providing captions-text transcriptions of the audio portion of TV shows and movies for people who are deaf or hard of hearing-in a player-compatible format and superimposing them on the video at the viewer's discretion. "WGBH currently creates closed captions for most major studio theatrical motion picture releases in the U.S., and, with content provider approval, will convert these captions into the player-compatible format for The IMS Company," said Larry Goldberg, director of WGBH's Media Access Group. WGBH will conform the theatrical captions to airline-edited versions as required by IMS.

Several airlines have previously relied on the closed caption capability of DVDs to accommodate the needs of deaf or hard of hearing passengers. "IMS is proud to be the first portables supplier to enable airlines to meet the needs of their passengers requiring this capability on an easy-to-use handheld platform," said Gray.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

The IMS portable media player (PMP) will store the formatted electronic text on the hard disc. If the viewer elects to view the captions, he can activate them via the GUI and the text is then synchronized to the video using timecode and displayed on the PMP's screen. If the viewer chooses not to watch captions, they will not be visible, according to IMS' managing director, content and media development, Michael Childers. The term "closed caption" refers to text which is accessed at the discretion of the viewer while "open captions" are always visible.

Captions, as opposed to "subtitles," reflect all of a program's audio for deaf or hard of hearing people, converting not only dialog into text, but also sound effects, music, speaker identifications and the like, which are needed for a more complete understanding and enjoyment of the content. Subtitles convert the spoken dialog from one language to another for hearing viewers, and do not include non-speech information.

The World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA) and others responded to the DOT Notice of Proposed Rulemaking by explaining that IFE systems do not have the same capability as broadcast television to provide closed captions. Citing the cost of converting existing IFE systems to accommodate captions versus building them into future systems, WAEA sought to defer the DOT requirements for implementation in emerging systems.

Responding to the concerns expressed by airlines and IFE industry groups, the DOT announced in May 2008 that it would defer the requirement for an undetermined time, citing the work of WAEA's Digital Content Management Working Group (DCMWG) and its 0403 Specification as evidence that the IFE industry is migrating toward digital solutions that would facilitate closed captions in future IFE systems. The DOT will "shortly" issue a Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (SNPRM) to gather more information on the capability of emerging technologies to provide a captioning solution.

About the Media Access Group at WGBH

The Media Access Group is a nonprofit service of Boston public broadcaster WGBH, with offices in Boston and Los Angeles. The Group includes DVS, which has made television, film and video more enjoyable to audiences who are blind or visually impaired since 1990, and The Caption Center-- the world's first captioning agency-- which has made audiovisual media accessible to audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing since 1972. The third branch of the Media Access Group, the WGBH-Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), is a research and development office that works to make existing and emerging technologies accessible to all audiences. NCAM's work on Accessible In-flight Entertainment systems has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), under grant number H133G050254.

For more information, go to access.wgbh.org

About The IMS Company: