By Noelle Perese
At the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in which numerous companies such as Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Sony revealed their latest products designed to revolutionize consumer use, the needs of deaf and hard of hearing consumers were largely neglected.
Many of those products have combined TV programming with related content from the Internet. Companies are also planning to distribute media through the Internet that can be uploaded to laptops, computers, media players, and flat screen televisions. None of these products are accessible for deaf and hard of hearing people. Companies are not required under federal law to provide captioning on the Internet, which means any media they create for the Internet such as television shows, videos, and other forms of entertainment will not be captioned at all.
Network television shows such as The Office, LOST, 24, and many others are now available for download on iTunes. If you upload a particular episode onto your video iPod (or soon to be iPhone), you’re out of luck. The same goes for uploading popular network shows onto your laptop even though your media player (such as Windows Media Player) has closed caption features.
Clearly these companies do not even think about deaf and hard of hearing people as a consumer demographic in their discussions about revolutionizing the Internet through streaming media. One such company is Netflix. They recently announced an “instant watching” service in which a Netflix user can watch a movie that is streamed over the Internet. Here are some small snippets from the press release:
Netflix will expand its service to include digital downloads of rented movies to subscribers’ computers via the Internet at no additional cost.
The number of hours of online viewing will be dictated by the type of subscription.
We named our company Netflix because we believed Internet-based movie rental represented the future, first as a means of improving service and selection, and then as a means of movie delivery,” said the firm’s chief executive, Reed Hastings.
I decided to find out if the “instant watching” service offered closed captioning for popular movies such as Jackass. I looked at the Netflix DVD title for Jackass, and it had the closed captioned symbol. Then I looked at the Jackass movie version offered in the “instant watching” service. It did not have the closed captioned symbol.
I fired off an email to Customer Service at Netflix:
To: customerservice@netflix.com
Subject: Instant watching: Video Playback
Subject: Customer ServiceI’ve noticed that you have introduced a new service that allows
Netflix users to watch movies that are streamed over the Internet. However, as a deaf consumer, the movies offered for instant watching do not have the closed captioning symbol. The movie, “Jackass,” which is offered on the instant watching list does not have the closed captioning symbol where the DVD itself (typically rented through the mail) does have the closed captioning symbol.Does this mean that movies offered in the instant watching list will not have closed-captioning? I look forward to hearing from you as a loyal deaf Netflix fan.
Thanks,
Noelle Perese
And a few hours later, I got this response from Customer Service:
Hello Noelle,
Thank you for contacting Netflix.com customer support!
We appreciate you taking the time to provide us with your feedback and comments. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you’ve experienced. Currently, our instant viewing movies do not have closed captioning.
We may offer this in the future but do not have a time frame for this. Please be assured that we are continually striving to improve our service.
We sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding.
Thanks,
Jonathan
Netflix Customer Service
The Internet is leaving us behind, which is ironic, because it has also revolutionized the deaf and hard of hearing community. What can we do as deaf consumers to make sure that we are considered as a valuable demographic that companies should consider when designing their products?
We have to lobby our lawmakers, and organizations such as NAD and AGB should get together to create a coalition to address this issue. It would be nice if we could reach out to the large companies as well to gain their support in creating legislation that require all telecommunications companies and media companies to provide captioning on all forms of media. This will be an uphill fight, of course, since we just finished the battle to caption all television shows.
Oh, and I urge you to let Customer Service at Netflix know what you think of their decision to not offer closed captioning for their “instant watching” service. And if you’re a Netflix customer, you’re paying for a service you can’t access!
Noelle Perese is a graduate of Smith College, ‘05, with a B.A. in Government. She currently works in Washington, DC. Her many interests are cooking, bad television shows, foreign movies, and talking about everything under the sun. Her main passion is politics, which began at the mock presidential election at St. Joseph’s Institute for the Deaf in 1992, where the only Republican she voted for was George H.W. Bush.
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99 Comments
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I was not surprised about such increasingly neglect on the part of consumer electronics and entertaintment industry at all!
Your suggestion for the NAD and AGB organizations to work together are really an excellent “first step” for the total access to the existing form of general entertaintment which the majority of population already have such a privilege to enjoy all the kinds of entertainment.
You also could contact other consumer advocacy organizations to fire up and demand for the total access to the general entertainment that wrongly deprive the deaf and hard of hearing individuals.
RLM
I was a member of NAD’s TAN Committee (Technology Access Network) several years ago and there were Deaf and Hard of Hearing telecommunications professionals who were working closely with the industry to remove barriers. The Committee was chaired by Gallaudet’s Board of Trustees Chairperson Pamella Holmes. This is the committee if they still exists and they are very proactive in contacting the industry on what accessibilities they are lacking.
Another person to contact is Claude Stout of TDI, Inc. he is a Deaf telecommunications advocate for people with hearing loss. Pam Holmes is another contact person for this venture. Dr. Judith Harkins of Gallaudet is also a staunch supporter for access to technology.
They are also very powerful customer advocate groups and I am not sure why not many people know about them. The group includes SHHH, AGB, NAD, etc. members who are fighting for equal access to all technology.
Technology will increasingly ensure that such instances will not happen. Consider the time frame it took for CC to get on TV, then on tapes and then for live programs. What they need to see is that “Hey, you’re also at risk alienating some 30 million people with hearing loss in the U.S. by not providing CC to your movies.” 30 million people is a lot of people they’d love to have access to. Technology will certainly help speed up better access for people with hearing loss, especially in the entertainment industry. It’ll be a matter of time when voice recognition software will prove valuable for on-demand captioning of any shows or live events.
Those companies don’t care about the 30 million people, and if they did, they’d have taken us into consideration when they designed their products and services.
Your idea of this being resolved by the free market isn’t going work without government regulation on this issue.
Noelle, McConnell is a staunch right-winger. I personally agree with you, but he’s not going to. *grin*
The free market conservative mantra is getting a little boring by now. We’ve seen what happened with deregulation, which really haven’t been to the benefit of consumers.
Free market has also brought about greater independency for deaf people already.
McConnell,
It has? How so? Do you think that we would have 100% captioning of all new TV programming without the FCC regulations?
Shane, you’re typing on DeafDC, over the internet, helping empower deaf and hard of hearing people. Internet is one technology that has helped increased greater independency.
What’s more I said “Free market has *also* brought about greater independency….” I didn’t say that technology alone was responsible for our greater independency. It took Federal intervention to pass laws
Vlog…blog…webcams…video phone…cochlear implants…hearing aids…satellites for virtual classrooms…voice recognition…cell phones with qwerty texting…etc..etc…ad nauseum and it will continue to improve.
Are you saying that technology has made it worse for deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States?
McConnell,
You’re contradicting yourself here. The concept of free market severely restricts government intervention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
In a pure free market, there would probably be no ADA, FCC regulations and so forth.
Vlogs, blogs, webcams, sidekicks, blackberries, and other products were NOT designed with the deaf community in mind, but due to the interoperability of the products, we indirectly benefitted from them.
That’s why Sidekick now recognizes us as a consumer demographic because we immediately used Sidekicks, and its popularity spread within the deaf community. They market to us now, and so does Blackberry. Those are indirect effects which benefitted us.
So in a way, those products without intending to, helped revolutionize the deaf community.
In fact, if telecommunication companies had carried on the standards for captioning to their internet services, it would have benefitted everyone that uses captioning, but they didn’t because they didn’t think of us as a consumer demographic.
They did not design their internet movie downloads with us in mind. The Apple Company did not design their iPods with us in mind. That’s why we need legislation because we can’t indirectly benefit from those products because of the lack of accessibility.
Sorry if this was rambling–just a stream of consciousness response.
Shane, what I meant is the supply and demand case in a capitalistic economy with consumers being the driver on how technology advances. Or would that be “create a demand” and then you would have a supply need?
At any rate, because of capitalism, technology was able to develop itself to the point where it actually benefitted us in many ways.
Noelle, I never said technology was designed with deaf people in mind. What I said that technology has brought about greater independency for deaf/hh people. Where have I said otherwise??
Shane:
As we understand a lot of programs have scripts that actors or anchors follows and that can be inserted into line 21 which is reserved for captioning. Why are they making things so hard and screaming “Undue burden” is beyond me.
Noelle, the thing is, they probably don’t realize that there are 30 million people in the U.S. with hearing loss. Provide them the data and they just might find themselves kicking their behinds once they see it. We dont’ even know for sure whether they realize the sheer number of people with hearing loss in the United States. That’s 1/10th of the total population of the United States. Or 1/20th if you consider people with severe to profound hearing loss. The technology is making it easier (and cheaper) nowadays to make CC movies. This trend will continue to get easier for the video and music industry as well. This just happens to be a different way of delivering movies done over the internet.
Now, did Noelle even bother to inform the company on the huge number of people with hearing loss? Are they informed about this? Do they even realize that more DVD’s are subtittled in different languages, including English? All you need is one master copy with the CC (or subtitle). The rest is easy.
Have you sent an e-mail to Customer Service at netflix explaining to them the HUGE numbers of people with varying levels of deafness in the United States and the HUGE numbers of people in the United States that are bilingual, such as Mexican-Americans who may benefit from having subtitles?
Just send the e-mail, and see what you get back in response. It’ll be the same stock letter that I got in response from them to my question.
Noelle is right, you’ll get the same canned response.
McConnell, you and I know that captioning media is not difficult and we both know those powerful numbers by heart. But that’s NOT the barrier that we face. The problem is ignorant decision-makers and the myth that captioning is an enormous investment that yields very little return.
Er, even better. Ya’ll can just embarrass them for not realizing the potential and money lost.
http://uk.gizmodo.com/2007/01/....._tvfi.html
Companies have become increasingly sensitive to criticisms coming from bloggers and commenters who have shamed them to change their ways and what not.
That’s nice. Have you contacted Netflix yet?
In time…need to do a little research first. Remember, Netflix just started this movie download business just this year. There was a few false start to get it going from what I could read so far.
Made a few phone calls but still I need to find the right person. Best bet right now is to embarrass the heck out of them for not thinking ahead. Blog it. Write comments on other forums.
Go here for a start.
http://www.topix.net/forum/com/netflix
And what makes you think that Netflix CEOs aren’t watching the boards and blogs. They look for those kinds of feedbacks nowadays….lurking and reading.
They lurk and read? I was under the impression that CEOs usually have their peons in cubicles surf media reports for them for customer feedback.
You’re saying that when a company tests a new service (like the one netflix is testing) they should be regulatorily forced to significantly increase their cost by creating and hosting duplicates of all their content for what is already a business gamble? It sounds like you’re advocating penalties for innovation under the banner of access. Oh and you look totally hot in that picture.
There really shouldn’t be a problem with providing access while being innovative. Whenever access is gained through a product for the deaf, such as televisions, nearly all people have benefitted from having closed captions.
I’ve seen captions on televisions in airports, sports bars, and almost everywhere, including the huge ABC screen in Times Square. I’ve known hearing parents of newborns use closed captions with the mute on so that they could watch television programming while rocking their children to sleep.
Everyone would benefit from having captions or subtitles on their favorite DVDs or television shows that are streamed over the internet. I’ve heard complaints from my Hispanic friends who wondered why they couldn’t get Spanish subtitles on their internet movie downloads.
Companies are really missing out on a very large audience that they could market internet movie and network shows downloads to. That’s the price that they’re paying in not being innovative in creating accessibility to their products.
I don’t debate the merits of captioning at all! I would just hate to see an emerging technology like legal full-length motion picture downloading be killed by regulation which increases its cost. Most new technology isn’t profitable straight from the gate, and something like that could kill it before it can develop.
That’s what people said about DVDs being required to have captioning and subtitles on them when the technology was just beginning to replace VHS tapes. The companies claimed that it would be a negative effect on their profit margin—look at where they are now! DVDs have been very profitable for the media companies in spite of their initial claims about captions and subtitles.
Yikes!
Why not create requirements that mandate companies build the concept of accessibility into the process of innovation?
For example, when creating the technology for a full-length motion picture download, the innovators are probably concerned about picture quality and sound quality. Simply add in captioning to the process and it would be a lot less cost-prohibitive and the right thing to do.
Exactly, and it saves them the trouble of having to fix bugs that might crop up when putting in captioning software on top of a platform that’s already been developed. Why not develop the captioning software or the accessibility mode of the platform when creating that service in the first place to begin with?
What I think needs to be done is a deaf MoveOn.org type organization. Membership’s free, and you get email alerts about situations like this. Then if you’re interested in doing something about it, they direct you to their website, where you can write an e-mail to the company, and they’ll send it for you. Or they’ll give you the contact information so you can contact the company directly to complain.
MoveOn.org has been very, very successful with this methodology. I don’t see why we can’t do that too. Any takers? :p
~ Deaf Pundit
I think this would be great for advocacy issues. In the 109th Congress, there were over 59 bills geared for the blind and visually impaired. In comparison, there were over 16 bills for the deaf and hard of hearing. It’s a question of lobbying power and we have to lobby Congress, telecommunication companies, and our own deaf organizations.
To hire a lobbyist is very costy. Most D/deaf organizations advocates on the behalf of the D/deaf. One negative thing that a not-for-profit organizations cannot spend as much money to a lobbying firm because of 501(c)(3) laws.
What NAD, AGB, SHHH, etc. can do is “educate” the legislators and that is one of the loopholes; nevertheless, it is not as effective as lobbying. Most lobbyist were former high level government officals. They know who to contact and get things done.
We need D/deaf elected in Congress and that way more attention will go to the legislators because they are in the same building as other legislators. They network and pass out information. The outsiders are not included as being a member of Congrress.
That’s why some organizations need to change to 501(c)4. I think NAD is ideal for a lobbying organization nowadays, but I doubt that will happen. And I agree, we need high level elected D/deaf officials. Hey, when I graduate from college, I just might run for office… Gonna vote for me? ;)
I definitely think that NAD should change to a 501(c)4. They can just split off a part of their organization for that, essentially have a lobbying arm that can do well for the deaf community.
I wonder what the membership funding is like for NAD though. AGB definitely gets more $$$ from the entire deaf community in comparison to NAD.
What is interesting is the wording of that undoubtedly stock letter response that Noelle received from Netflix:
“We may offer this in the future but do not have a time frame for this.”
In other words, what Netflix is basically telling us is that in the undefined future, there is a possibility - as strong or as remote as it might be - that movies in the “Instant Watching” service will be captioned.
Then again…maybe they won’t.
Somehow, I find that hardly reassuring.
Their stock letters are similar to the ones I’ve gotten from Amazon Unbox, Apple, and Jetblue about their products and services not being captioned. They’ve promised that they’re “working on this to provide this in the future” which basically means, “fuhgeddaboudit!” Why should they work on this when they’re not currently required by law to do so?
Ditto for CNN, ESPN, C-Span, and so many other websites that show web videos that I have sent emails to.
I’ve heard that they’ve had to strip out the captions embedded within the videos (that initially were on TV) when uploading them for internet distribution. This doesn’t make sense at all if this is true. Why not keep them in?
AOL Launches Closed Captioning for Online CNN Video
http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2.....-cnn-video
AOL has been very progressive, thanks to the hard work of national deaf and hard of hearing advocacy organizations.
Still very, very, very limited selection of captioned videos.
And the selection on closed captioned videos in Google is also very small. I don’t think the selection will expand unless there’s federal regulation on internet captioning.
Aren’t we the fast foodie types?
Here’s the thing. It just started last year about the Google captioning. Give it time. These things will grow. It always has once technolgy takes a hold.
The number of CD/DVD movies that are captioned/subtitled has grown tremendously over the years and covers many, many movie titles. Of course, there are still movies that are not CC, or even subtitled! But that’s getting smaller every year.
Only this time everything will revolve around the internet and satellite connection for our entertainment. And soon, your cell phone. And imagine only 6 years earlier in 2000, what kind of technology did we have back then compared to today? Better or worse for us?
Closed Captioning Hits Google Video
http://www.internetnews.com/xS.....hp/3633076
Fortunately for all of us, Google employs Ken Harrenstein, a deaf man, who helped make this possible. So it takes the efforts of national advocacy organizations and employees who support the deaf and hard of hearing community to make these changes possible.
Exactly, Shane. I know about Google. It’s all about raising awareness and technology today makes it easier, efficient and cheaper to provide CC to the masses. Not only that, it can also increase that margin of profitability even more. This is what moves them. Seeing the profit potential. We are, after all, a market economy based on capitalism.
The potential cost of a lawsuit should be added to the forecasted profit margin of any new technology that is not accessible.
It sounds like they are merely following the two most important rules in the business world: Rule #1, the customer is always right. Rule #2, if the customer is wrong, go back to Rule #1. They acknowledged and apologized for the inconvenience, yet made a very vague and feeble promise to maybe think about doing something about it. Not very reassuring. What’s worse, they send off an automatic, “cookie-cutter” reply to such customers in distress.
As the owner of a small court reporting/ transcription company I’ve been trying for months to find out how to get into this type of captioning service. I have a staff of 12 accurate and experienced people who would love to get into this service. How do I do it for you? I’m new at this blogging so please be patient with me. Thanks
Makes me wonder, not only about the rationale of stripping out the captioning you mentioned, Noelle, but also about the cost factor of doing so. Does caption embedding cost more? Not that that’s the point but I was just wondering out loud…..
It’s not about the cost of captioning–major telecommunication firms and internet media companies, with their huge profit margins, can afford captioning of their programming. For instance, there’s a captioning company, one out of the hundreds of captioning and subtitling companies in the US, where it costs $60 dollars per half hour to caption media content.
My theory is that they stripped out the captioning because of the speed issue in streaming the content over the internet.
Noelle:
You brought up a very important point such as streaming speed issue. I never thought of that and I will do some research on this. Closed captioned scripts needs to be inserted into line 21 and what if the speed is incompatible with the streaming speeds. That could be an issue that engineers are working on.
I think you may be thinking about analog. I believe that internet videos are in Flash, .MPEG, and other movie files.
Digital is a whole another story in terms of captioning.
Noelle:
You are correct about the analog mode which is good until 2009.
I tried flashplayer movies and could not get any captions except if they have the subtitle options.
What could be missing is the “standard” compliance for all digital video programs. I think it was Jared Evans on his blog talks about adding “captions” on the radio button icon. I liked his idea and this should be included in the standard as well.
So..we only have 16 bills, I d say half of them will get through the door. I d admit, Im not impressed with those techie who seemed to run out of ideas. But hey, Im right here and I might as well contribute to a lobbist group and I have the brain in interactive media/. The ‘customer is always right’ and yet companies ignored our value opinion that could serve us better.
Actually, those bills were in the previous Congress. So far, there are no bills for the deaf, save the IDEA Full Funding Act, in the current 110th Congress which took effect on January 4, 2007.
Ah, I see, thanks! The IDEA is just pathetic. They ought to re-write the whole policy.
Well, I think it’s time for us to make a new bill. ADA is doing nothing, it helped us a lot but loop holes are found! So we have to find another way to beat them AGAIN! If our bill is denied and denied, well, then they are messing with the wrong culture when they see over a million of us walking down to Capital Hill for our Bill of Rights! :o)
ADA is a wonderful law; however, over time courts find most of the actions are unconsitutional.
Business are spending tons of money on lobbying efforts to weaken the ADA.
They have been successful with migating issues.
The ADA is not soild and everything is up for interpretation in court of law.
DeafLinux-
You may be correct about that and whats more–this is scary to hear this–many businesses today could deny many deaf employees promotional opportunities, accessibility equipment to do their jobs, and the like. You are right that ADA is being slowly stripped. Its going to set us back years due to eroding rights or denial of our rights.
Question is: what are we and the deaf community doing to stem the decline of the ADA’s potency?
I am confused here. I assume my TV has a “chip” that allows me to see closed captions as long as I have it turned on. If I dont have the “chip” the captions don’t work. Far as I know, my computer doesn’t have this “chip”. So is the reason I can’t see the captions on downloaded films because I don’t have a “chip” in my computer or because the captions were stripped? Are you talking about open captions that everyone could see?
I brought up that argument years ago with the decoder chip (analog)issues. What they are saying the digital (HDTV) television is not really a TV its just a computer monitor. The regular TV is analog based and this includes a decoder chip build in. This notion creates problems because the HDTV does not have decoder chip. FCC needs to revisit this and demand that video providers to provide closed captioned. The digital tv laws went into effect in 2006. The problem is technology is evolving so fast and legislators are not aware of futuristic technology abilities. Its hard to write a Bill to include all the technology advancements of the future.
Also, by the year 2009, analog televisions will be phased out for digital televisions which means if you have an analog television, you’ll have to get a HD converter, so this is a really important issue.
I do agree that technology is booming and we are indeed neglected. What about HDTV? It is not able to provide captioning because of amount of lines HDTV uses, example regular TV would use 110 lines with CC while HDTV has over how many? 200? 500? so CC is lost in it. Not only HDTV, technology is advancing so much that people want faster services by using headsets, earphones where they can walk around with phone plugged in their ears while they work, and so on, while we are trapped using slow relay service which is great for us to make a call but out in the job field, it is not.
How do we say HEY, WHAT ABOUT US? Many say oh yeah but never commit to figuring that out. Sitting and complaining on a blog is a start but how about rolling up your sleeves and start making noise? I have tried and tried to get deaf people to commit to having a DEAF MILLION MARCH, not for DPN, but for our rights as an American and our right as an individual. Many laugh at me like it’s impossible, why is everything “IMPOSSIBLE” for us? it’s so sickening to see that. ADA law has too many loop holes where a lot of corporations are getting away with it. With today’s society, english language means nothing, because there are so many meanings on what a sentence could imply. For example, a lot of corporations now say MUST HAVE GREAT COMMUNICATION SKILLS, meaning no deafs!
I have been told a lot of times that I cannot be hired because the jobs I apply are a FAST-PACED job, meaning it’s either cuz they view me as a MR or they feel that they would have to stop production and talk to me so I can get the message. Some even told me how can I communicate with their clients? What if there was a misunderstanding? I am able to speak no problem but the word “DEAF” itimidates them! Even some organizations that is supposedly to benefit deaf people hire hearing people to run the business. SAD BUT TRUE. I am not going to sit back and cry about it. I have been trying to fight the system but I’ve been doing it alone. I know I am not the only one, why cannot we all BAND TOGETHER AS ONE?
It’s up to all of you to put your foot forward and say “ENOUGH!”
Also when you claim 30 million deaf people, yes there are 30 million deaf, HOH, oral, and people who suffer some hearing loss but not considered to be “DEAF” but about 2 million use ASL in this country.
Noelle Perese, you majored in Government, so you know what we would need to do to start a million deaf march for our rights in this country as an individual and to be taken seriously.
Brian. I have HDTV and it has captioning. There is this captioning law saying that any tv 13-inch or bigger require it to have a captioning chip inside it. And then Congress mandated that all HDTV television sets sold after July 2002 contain a closed-caption decoder chip, and that by 2006 all networks are required to broadcast a totally digital signal.
So the blog posts by deaf people who say that HDTV captioning has problems aren’t real? Hmm.
Noelle. It is that I don’t have any problems with my HDTV and captioning. It was Brian who made the sweeping generalization saying none of the CC works on HDTV.
What is your professionalism?
I too faced similar attitudes from companies who don’t want to hire me - what deaf person hasn’t?!
I worked as a programmer on my last job and they only gave me ONE project to work on that did not require much interaction with the clients. They gave other projects to other programmers.
I did complain about this to my boss, why am I only working on one project??
“Well, you know that project better than anyone else, so I’d rather you stay on that project…”
As a result, I got isolated and bored - coming in late or calling in. It just didn’t boost my pride in my work - THREE years can be…phew. I developed this hatred towards those people who had no idea what they were doing to me.
But, I’m not giving up and hope to find a job where they are not afraid to use me to communicate with clients via interpreters, emails, video relay service, etc…
Funny, we would have wished for this technology 30 years ago thinking they would be going, “This is AWESOME!!! It really makes things so much easier!!”
Umph. Yeah, ADA is weak.
But IS it the ADA that we need to improve? Or something else?
We need a Deaf Role for companies to acknowledge and understand how a Deaf person is very much capable and what uses (interpreters, emails, VI, etc) would allow that person to perform his/her job.
As for “MUST HAVE GREAT COMMUNICATION SKILLS!” - we need to educate those folks, people.
We’ve got to find a successful deaf person and hopefully that person doesn’t mind being used as a role model for all companies! We need to expose that person, putting that person on a pedestal – as far as how to communicate with people, clients, etc!
Anyone?! I see a lot of potential candidates here!
:)
Sorry- a little off on that subject- US Census Bureau is the one that need to change the ‘wording’ in the survey. And to make it clear to who you are: A signer? Non-signer? etc? Then we can see the actual stats. Then perhaps Federal funding could start coming in.
yes you are right. I do not think the census is 100% accurate because how does the US Census Bureau know which one of us are signers and which one of us are really deaf? I was never asked by the US Census Bureau unless they went thru our Social Security numbers thru the SSI and SSD office, LOL where majority of us use the advantage to get SSI or SSD until we find a good job. If we accept SSI or SSD, it is telling the Government and the country taxpayers that we are indeed disabled. Yet it is them who makes us feel that way to begin with as well. We are both to blame. It’s a two-way street to communicate and say HEY, WE CAN DO ANYTHING IF YOU GIVE US A CHANCE! I do not agree with the Census results but I have to use it for now since it’s the only evidence I have to support my argument.
This issue had been brought up by NAD. I am not sure why it was not included. From what I learned and I am not sure if that is true but they mentioned that census can hurt the D/deaf because no one knows how many people are signers. Some say its 2 million and others say 700,000. What we have now is a .010% of the population is a better way to caculate for funding purposes.
Another issue are brought up in the past were the labels of “disability” and D/deaf folks do not want to be in that category except “cultural.” If we need funding and etc. we should use the political word, “disability” to get grants and government funds.
In reality, Deafness is a disability and that word is a taboo within the Deaf community. Now you wonder why D/deaf Services Center had trouble getting grants. There are not many grants or government funds within the “cultural” category.
I believe the D/deaf community needs to reword and accept the disability term for funding purposes. In addition we can get disability and cutural grants which is a win-win for the D/deaf community.
Most of the subtitles on UK TV are supplied by third-party companies; it will only be a matter of time before on-the-fly close-captioning is available to internet streamed media.
McConnell you are confused! People who have HDTV - high definition TV does not mean it dont have captioning, if you use your High Definiton TV on High defition cable or tv station you will see caption is not working! TRUST ME! My family and friends have HDTV and everytime I use their TV on HD, CC dont work on cable stations and I had to put on the same movie on regular cable channel where it is CC. For example you are watching LORD OF THE RINGS on HBO HD channel, you will not get CC but if you put HBO without HD, it will be CC even if you have HD TV itself.
You gotta call local cable provider and have them fix it.
Grant:
Does the local cable provider have control over captions? I thought it was the national station. What do they need to do is to be reminded to press the caption mode button?
Short answer - Yes.
For example, HBO HD doesn’t show CC in New Jersey but it will caption in Texas. It is more like local station, cable and/or satellite issue. But if there’s no CC in both states, it is probably related to nationwide, need to call HBO Headquarter.
Another example, Channel 4 local news station will not caption but channel 5 local news station will caption, it is probably has nothing to do with cable/satellite provider. Need to call local station and straight it out.
I’ve heard stories many times that engineers forgot to turn it on, did not set it up properly and/or equipment is not upgrade, etc.
Many times, they will “point” to each other for not making sure CC is running properly. It remind me of Dell and Microsoft – they are pointing each other for buggy software and faulty hardware. Consumer is one who suffers…
My answer is not best but you get the idea. Yes, it is confusing.
Brian, like I said. I don’t have a problem with HDTV when it comes to CC. Read what Grant wrote.
well it seems like the entire network that provides HD does not work. Local channels or cable, it will not be CC in our city or state. I used my friend’s TV with HD and none of the HD channels are CC, so I use the regular channels, I am not sure if it’s actually the station’s fault or HDTV does not understand CC like some DVD’s dont! I do understand how a network would forget to turn on captioning services but specifically HDTV, none of the channels work! HBO, ABC, CBS, FOX, and etc. maybe each state has their own station that controls the NATIONAL stations like NBC, CBS, and etc. but what about HBO or whatever when it’s 1 station and 1 company? if HBO is captioend in HD in your home, then why isn’t it not CC here? I find it hard to believe that HD only works in some states. I have heard it was because HD has a lot of lines (pixels, something along that line where CC is lost between the lines) So do anyone really know what the real problem is? the station or the TV’s inability to understand CC when it’s switched to HDTV mode?
I will find out more about HDTV here in my hometown and see if it’s just my friend’s or not but it also did not work at my sister’s place as well.
I live in Dallas, Texas. I have Mitsubishi DLP-based HDTV for over a year now and CC has been working very well. Yes, all of my HD channels have CC on it. (Not all the times, tho)
Some of you still can’t figure it out how to enable CC on their HDTV, call tech support or local station.
Anyway, about Netflix and AppleTV and many others — that’s something we all have to work on it. Keep bother them till they offers one.
gwlj
Wow, I feel really stupid sitting here complaining and bitching about how TV is not always captioned (I have not upgraded to HDTV, but clearly from reading this blog - I’d be forced to in a few years) and why the heck my mailed DVDs from BlockBuster Online program weren’t closed-captioned when it says so on the DVDs!!
Especially documentary films - almost none!
And here people are trying to DO something about it!
I’m glad!
I think A Deaf Pundit has a great idea - making a Deaf MoveOn.org - it IS effective methodolgy!!
I am a member and they are always raising hell and getting attention on issues!
A Deaf Pundit, contact moveon.org and see if we can “expand” from them to create one for the Deaf Community?
I think it’d be a great way to also keep the hearing in “the loop” by seeing what’s up with the Deaf Community and their concerns on issues, such as this one?
I gotta admit, I’m really intimitated by the intelligent of Deaf people here! But I’m acting like a dork going, “Oh you all f*king rock, I love you all!!! Yeah!! \m/ \m/” :P
*hats off to you all, walks back in the closet*
LOL! Actually, that’s exactly what’s in my mind when reading the comments from most of these people here at DeafDC.com too :) feel intimidated, OK, but don’t go back to the closet, jump right in, the water’s fine!
;)
Not sure about the temperature in the water…should I dare ask who’s controlling the heat in the pool? :) :D
See, I’m out of the closet just for a moment…I’m scared of moths!! *squeals*
Well to answer your question about why it is not CC on DVD when it says it is… it’s not the DVD that is not providing the caption it is your DVD player!!! Strange but true. I have 3 DVD’s at my house, and only 1 of them works with CC while the other 2 does not understand CC!!!! When my DVD does not have subtitles but CC and I do not see CC on my DVD, I go to my smallest and cheapest DVD that I bought for 35 bucks and it showed my DVD with CC. It all varies what DVD you have! I do not know why it does that. A friend of mine and I have the same brand and almost identical DVD but not exactly the same but hers was CC while mine does not show CC.
It’s not the DVD if it says it’s CC then it is CC. Ofc with a few exception of typo if it is not CC and it says it is, then that would be a major typo or illegal typo according to ADA perhaps.
I see that…a friend of mine said his worked when I complained about one documentary not being CC’d.
I also have three DVDs plus PS2 where I can also insert in (only works if it comes with Subtitled English, ofc).
They all respond to the same thing.
Hmm…so, does that mean my DVD players are ‘late-deafened’?
Time to put cochlear implants on ‘em! ;)
Maybe it’ll work!!
*smiles* To be honest with you, I think we all feel intimitated sometimes on here.
Talking with MoveOn.org’s a good idea… Not sure how much they’ll help us, but it’s worth a shot. I’ll get back to you guys when I get something from them. It would be helpful though, if I had more indication of how many people are interested in doing something like this.
~ Deaf Pundit
I’d be interested in joining!
I’d like to know if anyone else would be interested, too.
How’d we ask around? Got your own blog?
Yeah, I got my own blog. Deleted my old posts and just set up an informal poll on it. So if anyone is or not interested in seeing an organization like this happen, feel free to comment on my blog about it. You should be able to reach my blog by clicking on my name.
~ Deaf Pundit
Regular DVD player will work fine with CC. There’s newer player called Upconverter DVD player — This kind device is awesome (increase colorful and higher resolution) but it will block CC unfortunately. Only way to watch it is subtitle.
Need to avoid it for now till they fix it? Who knows?
yes a regular DVD player will work fine with CC but why doesn’t all DVD players show CC when the DVD movie does have CC? I have that problem everytime I buy a DVD!!! As I said I bought 3 so far and 2 of them which is good quality but no CC, and I bought a cheap one and it provides CC. When I play a movie it will not be CC so I test it on my little DVD and it will be CC. I want to pull my hair out so bad and throw out the DVD and yell at everyone I see in that store i bought it from. While most of my friends lucked out getting good DVD’s that understood CC!! I manage to fail everytime!!! I got a cheap one that provides CC but it’s so cheap that it’s not that great to use!! I cannot win! arrghh!!!! I think I have a hair left in my head, I’ll save it for the next new DVD player I buy!
The CC information is digitally encoded in the video. A DVD player has to extract it specifically and put it in line 21 of the analog TV signal. Although this step is absolutely trivial, there are some DVD players that skip it, especially cheap import players. In a nutshell, it pays to do a bit of research before buying a player.
Christian,
Please email me, asap.
Thanks.
Brian - this is in responese to #76840
I had the same problem - my father got a new widescreen LCD HDTV from Sony. Captions work on this fine. He then bought a DVD player from Toshiba that has HDMI capability (this is the newer generation standard DVD player, not BluRay or HD DVD). The captions feature do not work when I am playing a DVD - which is not good when the DVD doesn’t have English subtitles.
So he emailed Toshiba and asked what was up, and they gave the standard canned response that Noelle has told us about: “We do not currently support captions and we do not forsee having it in the future.” or something along those lines. So my father said, okay, I will return this DVD player and not buy your products until you change your policy. So he went around trying to find another HDMI DVD player that would support captions. Short answer - NONE. So we deaf and hard of hearing people lose out on the higher definition and better resolution that are provided by HDMI DVD players because if the DVD has only captions, then we can’t watch it unless we have the non-HDMI version of a DVD player…
Another tidbit for thought - I called Apple because they don’t appear to support captions in QuickTime and they gave me the standard response - “We are aware of this problem and are looking into it.” Strange that Windows actually allows you to have captions, if the video has it.
Pat, I wrote a blog entry on this topic a while ago. It’s becoming quite clear that the next-gen video players (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) will be replacing CC with SDH (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing). For the HDMI inputs, it’s unlikely we will be seeing any CC support anytime soon. If I recall correctly, there are HD receivers for TV with CC decoder built in for the HDMI/DVI inputs.
I don’t think we will be seeing a lot of DVD players with CC decoders either. So, SDH is pretty much the solution to this problem for the DVDs. SDH has the same functions as CC including sound descriptions unlikely the regular English subtitles often found on DVDs.
Ruckus Network Launches Free Campus Access To Downloads
Monday, January 22, 2007; D02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....00804.html
If at first you don’t succeed, give it away.
As college students all over the country devoured pirated music and movie files, Herndon-based Ruckus Network formed more than two years ago to provide a legal way for kids to get their download fix. The concept: Put entertainment files on a server and park it on a college campus — for a licensing fee — so students could download legitimate media files. Doubling as a social networking site, Ruckus let users share playlists, invite friends to join, make profiles and write reviews. Think Facebook meets Napster.
About 82 colleges, including the University of Maryland and Gallaudet University, signed up for the service. But there are a lot of online entertainment sites out there, and this one wasn’t selling as fast as chief executive Michael Bebel had hoped.
So, starting today, the company is rolling out an approach it hopes will appeal to cash-strapped college kids everywhere: making it free.
Anyone with an e-mail address that ends in “.edu” will now have free access to 2.1 million music tracks. For an extra $15 a semester, students can also access 4,000 film and television files. University faculty and alumni can also use the network, but filters will recognize them as non-students, and they will have to pay a monthly fee.
The program works like other digital-media download sites, such as Rhapsody. After installing it on your desktop, you can download albums in less than a minute. But since it’s provided over the Internet, high network traffic can cause slow download speeds at peak-usage times
Until today, colleges and universities have had to pay for the rights to use the entertainment content. Now, the idea is that advertising will cover licensing costs.
“The social component is as important as media content,” said Bebel, who previously headed Universal Inc.’s music group as well as Pressplay, a music download venture by Sony and Universal that was later bought by Roxio and powered the newest version of Napster. “It makes for a terrific place to go and discover new music through a community.”
Bebel expects Ruckus to spread among students living on campus first. The start-up has already been well received by local venture capitalists. Over the summer, Ruckus won $13.7 million in its third round of financing.
Thanks I intend to address this issue by writing to my Senators and Representative. I have a deaf daughter and son in law and know what they go through. You have my support.
Cool. Someone’s actually taking action. If anyone else wants to contact their Senators or Representative, you can find their info at: http://www.vote-smart.org/index.htm
Netflix has a new feature called “Watch Now” where one can watch videos RIGHT AWAY via Netflix’s website. A limited number of subscribers are getting it, with everyone getting it by June or so. I got it last week, and eagerly tried it out — but to my dismay, it doesn’t do closed captioning. So, I emailed Netflix about this, and got a form letter back thanking me for my suggestion for a new addition to the website’s features (or something like that). Really hope Netflix implements this SOON.
I’m really glad you posted about this. It has been driving me nuts since iTunes started offering online TV/movies last year.
I had googled for an answer several times, because I remembered reading that the new version of QuickTime supported ‘closed’ captioning.
Tonight I was trying to watch last week’s Smallville (from the TiVo) and discovered that it wasn’t captioned. Wishing I could go on iTunes and find it there, I googled the topic again and ended up here.
I’m definitely interested in the deaf-issues MoveOn.com idea, and I’ll definitely be writing my representatives about captioning.
Talking about Deaf representatives, I almost feel inspired enough to get into politics… not quite.
As for Deaf roll-models for companies, NTID’s office of Employment does a lot of that.
Call it “MovieOn.org” or “MovieOn.com”…which ever.
Ha. Very funny, mcconnell. You may not like what MoveOn.org does, but their methods are effective. Why re-invent the wheel here?
The concept behind the deaf MoveOn.org or rather, Silent Cacophony, is more than just demanding captioning for movies and such. I’m hoping that we’ll able to become a sophisicated self-advocacy organization and tackle other issues such as ADA, telecommunications, interpreting and issues like that.
But that’ll cost money, which is why Silent Cacophony’s just a blog right now.
Effective? There IS a difference between shill and making a point.