{"id":10908,"date":"2010-06-21T06:09:11","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T11:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/?p=10908"},"modified":"2010-06-21T06:30:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-21T11:30:00","slug":"on-web-video-captions-are-coming-slowly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2010\/06\/21\/on-web-video-captions-are-coming-slowly\/","title":{"rendered":"On Web Video, Captions Are Coming Slowly"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Web Video, Captions Are Coming Slowly<\/strong><\/p>\n

By BRIAN STELTER<\/p>\n

Published: June 20, 2010<\/p>\n

The actress Marlee Matlin shimmied her way onto \u201cDancing With the Stars\u201d two
\nyears ago, memorably using sign language to tell viewers to \u201cread my
\nhips.\u201d But when Ms. Matlin, who is deaf, went to ABC.com to watch a replay
\nof the show, she was impeded because the network\u2019s videos were missing
\ncaptions.<\/p>\n

Closed-captioning is mandatory on television, but not for TV programs on the
\nInternet. And that has turned Web sites like ABC.com into battlegrounds for
\nadvocates like Ms. Matlin, who have spoken up on the lack of captions on
\nsites like CNN.com and services like Netflix.<\/p>\n

Media companies say they are working hard to make online video more
\naccessible. YouTube, the world\u2019s biggest video Web site by far, now supplies
\nmostly accurate captions using voice-recognition software. ESPN is offering
\ncaptions for its live streams of World Cup matches. And ABC now applies the
\nTV captions for \u201cDancing With the Stars\u201d to ABC.com.<\/p>\n

But big gaps remain much to the dismay of deaf Web users. Television
\nepisodes on CBS.com, news videos on CNN.com and entertainment clips on
\nMSN.com all lack captions, to name a few.<\/p>\n

Other Web sites, like NBC.com, are inconsistent about captioning, so
\n\u201cAmerica\u2019s Got Talent\u201d has captions but \u201cThe Marriage Ref\u201d does not.<\/p>\n

As online video becomes ever more popular, deaf viewers face the prospect of
\na partly inaccessible Internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not want to be left behind as television moves to the Internet,\u201d said
\nRosaline Crawford, the director of the law and advocacy center for the
\nNational Association of the Deaf.<\/p>\n

The Hearing Loss Association of America says that 36 million Americans have
\nsome degree of hearing loss. Other groups, like English-language learners,
\nalso benefit from captions.<\/p>\n

Groups like Ms. Crawford\u2019s say they are merely fighting to maintain the
\naccess to television that they won a generation ago, in 1990, when Congress
\nmandated closed captioning technology in virtually all TV sets, and in 1996,
\nwhen Congress required most shows to have captions. \u201cEvery generation of
\ntechnology that comes out seems to be a bit late on accessibility,\u201d said
\nLarry Goldberg, director of media access for WGBH, the PBS member station in
\nBoston.<\/p>\n

Advocates are pushing Congress to pass an update to the bill that would
\nmandate captions on any online video that has also appeared on TV, like
\nprime-time comedies and dramas, and would take other steps to make consumer
\nelectronics more accessible, by requiring closed-caption buttons on remote
\ncontrols, for instance.<\/p>\n

A Senate subcommittee held a hearing on the bill last month.<\/p>\n

In written testimony, Ms. Matlin imagined trying to watch Neil Armstrong\u2019s
\nwalk on the moon on the Web, but finding that his \u201cgiant leap for mankind\u201d
\nwords had been \u201cerased.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s how taking closed captions out of broadcast
\ncontent now being shown on the Internet feels to millions of people like
\nmyself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The prospect of legislation is motivating some major Web site operators to
\nadd captions more quickly.<\/p>\n

A collection of industry groups is close to finishing a universal standard
\nfor online captions, which would make it easier to adapt TV captions to
\nother formats. \u201cI think there\u2019s a bit of foot-dragging based on waiting for
\nthat standard to be finished,\u201d Mr. Goldberg said.<\/p>\n

Advocates have been exceptionally vocal about the problem. Take Hulu, the
\nbiggest Web site for TV episode viewing, which offers captions in multiple
\nlanguages for some shows (including many of its most popular ones), but not
\nall.<\/p>\n

It is pressing its content suppliers \u2014 networks and studios \u2014 for more
\ncaptions. \u201cUsers send us feedback about closed captions more often than
\nalmost any other feature, so what started as a small side project has turned
\ninto a very important part of our user experience,\u201d Eric Feng, the chief
\ntechnical officer for Hulu, said in an e-mail message.<\/p>\n

It is also a priority at YouTube, a unit of Google, where captions can be
\nviewed for any video uploaded since April, as long as it is in English and
\nhas a clear audio track. The voice-recognition technology makes mistakes,
\nbut it has been lauded as a major improvement for deaf and hard of hearing
\nWeb users.<\/p>\n

There is also a business reason for Google to be captioning, Mr. Goldberg
\nsaid: \u201cWhen you start adding text to all of your videos, search is aided
\ntremendously.\u201d Industry groups say captioning can be expensive in some
\ncases, and they argue that poorly conceived rules could stifle innovation.
\nBut they acknowledge the value of captions.<\/p>\n

Ken Harrenstien, a software engineer at YouTube and Google, who is deaf and
\nwho is heading the captions project, said the auto-captioning can be
\ntranslated into more than 50 languages. But so far the technology recognizes
\nonly English-language audio, something that he said \u201cwe need to broaden.\u201d<\/p>\n

On other Web sites, captions are being added gradually \u2014 far more slowly
\nthan advocates would like.<\/p>\n

Netflix came under fire last year for not having captions on its TV and
\nmovie streams. It said that reformatting its files to include the text would
\ntake software advancements and a huge amount of time. In April it announced
\nthat four seasons of \u201cLost\u201d had been captioned, and that it would \u201cbe
\nworking to fill in the library over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the big TV networks that stream full episodes online, most are
\ncaptioned, with the biggest exception being CBS, which says it is now
\ndeveloping a video player program that will support captions. Anthony
\nSoohoo, the senior vice president of CBS Interactive\u2019s entertainment unit,
\nsaid the site planned to release it in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n

Adding captions to the countless video clips on the Web is an even bigger
\nhurdle, one that the bill largely leaves untouched. Software like YouTube\u2019s,
\nthough, may help. Said Mr. Harrenstien, \u201cOnly a tiny percentage of the
\nworld\u2019s videos are captioned, so we have a lot of work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source:
\n