it's about time.

Closed Captions have been around for as long as I can remember. When I was young, my mom bought the old-school machine that captioned the TV shows for you. Then captions were required to be part of TV setups. Then DVDs had English subtitles. Technology seemed to be getting better and better yet there is still so much that needs to be done which could have been done already.

Live captions are still not 100% efficient. DVDs aren't required to have English subtitles and thus, I can actually list movies for you that I know are not captioned because I was not able to efficiently watch them (Jerry Maguire, The Royal Tenenbaums, Cake Eaters, The Usual Suspects, Up...). With the exception of ABC and a few Hulu shows, a lot of online television is not captioned. Newsclips on newspaper sites are not captioned. Youtube is not captioned. A lot of commercials aren't captioned. When shows have previews for next week's episode, they're not captioned.

The struggle is a difficult one especially when reading captions is so second-nature to me. It allows me to keep up in a hearing activity and it has been around forever. People can argue that the technology is not available yet in some regards, yet some outlets, like Netflix, had the option of using a program which would allow captions on their live streaming videos, but chose not too. It is actions like these that are frustrating and unfair for people such as me who really really rely on these captions.

Luckily, people in the deaf and hard-of-hearing community are not giving up without a fight. I have a Twitter account and one of my favorite people to follow is the deaf actress Marlee Matlin. She is constantly fighting for something, not necessarily even deaf issues, but definitely including them. She spent several months making a lot of noise over the fact that when Netflix allowed free streaming of "The Wizard of Oz" for its anniversary, it had no captions even though its
DVD does have captions. Recently, she also fought Disney over the fact that captions for the movie "Up" were only on the bonus features CD and thus, not provided when people rented the movie. Turns out, it was a "manufactoring" issue and now all future copies of the movie will indeed have captions.

I have been complaining about lack of captionings on certain things for years but of course, I never did anything about it other than just that - complain. I look at Marlee, who obviously has a bit of power as a person in the spotlight, but she just aggressively contacts these people who are excluding the deaf community and lets them know that it's unacceptable. I should be able to take the time to write emails or letters or follow blogs about these issues which so personally affect me. I hope that as I further progress into a career in deaf education, my resources and ability to fight more will grow and I will be able to make my own noise about these issues which can be so easily resolved.

To end on a positive note, Marlee Matlin shared this link with her Twitter followers which got me thinking about all of this in the first place. Yay!

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/automatic-captions-in-youtube.html