TDI Conference: TV Captioning Issues – Part 2 <\/p>\n
By Lise Hamlin <\/p>\n
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <\/p>\n
Editor: Here’s Lise Hamlin’s writeup of Cheryl Heppner’s workshop on
\nTV Captioning Issues. This workshop included a bunch of captioning
\npros, including: Moderator: Cheryl Heppner, Executive Director, NVRC <\/p>\n
– Rosaline Crawford, Director, Law & Advocacy Center, National
\nAssociation of the Deaf <\/p>\n
– Greg Hlibok, Senior Attorney, Disability Rights Office, Federal
\nCommunications Commission <\/p>\n
– Michael Schooler, Deputy General Counsel, National Cable &
\nTelecommunications Association <\/p>\n
– Heather York, Account Executive\/Marketing Manager, VITAC <\/p>\n
– Marsha McBride, Executive Vice President, Legal & Regulatory
\nAffairs, National Association of Broadcasters <\/p>\n
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <\/p>\n
VITAC, A Captioning Provider <\/p>\n
Heather York is the marketing manager for VITAC, a captioning
\nprovider. Heather was there to talk about common types of viewer
\nissues received by a captioning provider and strategies to resolve
\nthem. <\/p>\n
VITAC captions about 150,000 hours of programming every year for NBC,
\nABC, and most of the cable networks. While their customers are the
\nnetworks and the programmers, their goal is to please the people who
\nsee the captions. One of the things Heather does at VITAC is respond
\nto questions and complaints from people who are having trouble with
\ncaptioning. <\/p>\n
Heather reported that VITAC receives about 250 emails a year from
\nconsumers who are having trouble with their captions in one way or
\nanother. One of the customers told her that for every one complaint
\nthey receive, they assume they have a thousand other people who
\nhaven’t taken the time to comment but were bothered similarly by the
\nproblem. So, approximately 250,000 households are affected by
\ncaptioning problems she has received. And VITAC is just one company
\nreceiving these captioning complaints. <\/p>\n
The most common complaints she hears about are: <\/p>\n
1) No captions — on the entire TV show, at the start of the show, at
\nthe end of the show, and on a whole network. <\/p>\n
2) Bad captions: garbled captions, captions that jump up and down on
\nthe screen, misspellings, or captions that don’t reference proper
\nnames or places so you have no idea what they’re talking about. <\/p>\n
3) Spanish caption problems from people who don’t know how to turn
\nSpanish captions off their TV when they pop up. <\/p>\n
Heather does share these complaints with her customers, the networks
\nand programmers. She says, “If the screen went black, millions of
\npeople would have a problem. Captions should be treated the same way.
\nIn short, we tell them captions should say what they’re saying, no
\nmatter what the problem is.” <\/p>\n
There are three places where captioning problems occur: <\/p>\n
1) At the production of the actual captions. This results in getting
\nbad captions because of sloppy captioning, poor training, equipment
\nfailure or technical difficulties. <\/p>\n
2) In the distribution of captioning. This presents a lot of
\nproblems: problems with the network airing the program or at the
\ncable or satellite end. <\/p>\n
3) A problem with the television set. <\/p>\n
VITAC finds most consumers who have a problem end up getting bounced
\naround between three people. The cable company says it’s the TV, the
\nnetwork says it’s the cable company, the cable company says it’s the
\nnetwork. <\/p>\n
Three steps that VITAC recommends to resolve captioning complaints: <\/p>\n
1) Check your TV. If the same problem shows up on more than one set,
\nit’s not the TV at fault. If the problem is on one TV and not other,
\nit’s probably your TV is to blame. <\/p>\n
2) Contact your local cable or satellite provider. Be very detailed
\nwith what you tell them. Name, channel you were watching, program you
\nwere watching, date and time of the problem. Description of the
\nproblem and indicate that you confirmed the problem is not your
\ntelevision. Give them 24 hours. <\/p>\n
3) Contact the network on which you experienced the problem. <\/p>\n
4) Contact the FCC <\/p>\n
Apparently, emailing one party and copying the others — such as the
\nnetwork, the cable company and the FCC — works well and helps the
\npeople get responses. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes consumers
\nneed to go to their elected officials. But it has worked well in
\nseveral cases. <\/p>\n
National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) <\/p>\n
Marsha McBride is the executive Vice President of the Legal
\nDepartment for the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). She
\nwas at the conference to talk about broadcaster issues with closed
\ncaptioning and how they’re being resolved. <\/p>\n
Marsha noted that NAB has been participating in the rule making
\nprocess on behalf of the broadcasters of the United States. She said
\nthe one place where consumers and broadcasters totally agreed was the
\nissue of notice about complaints and how they should be handled. NAB
\nwould like to be in a position where if they did get an e-mail, that
\nbroadcasters would know immediately whether it was their problem or
\nthe cable system, and that they would be able to respond to that
\nquickly. <\/p>\n
NAB believes there should be an easy way to know who to call or email
\nat the broadcast station. All of those things would facilitate not
\nonly consumers getting better treatment and better captioning, but
\nalso give broadcasters a better understanding of what kinds of
\nproblems they could anticipate. <\/p>\n
NAB also agrees that 30 days for a turn around is absolutely the
\nmaximum that there should be for a response. NAB has polled their
\nbroadcasters and found they would actually like to be able to fix
\nproblems immediately when it can be done. <\/p>\n
Marsha indicated the biggest frustration that broadcasters face is
\nthat there is a limited number of realtime captioners and voice
\nrecognition technology is not as good as they had anticipated it
\nwould be by now. <\/p>\n
Most of the members of NAB are small individual stations or group
\nowners in areas from Idaho to Kansas. The smaller broadcaster aren’t
\nable to purchase captioning for 15 stations the way the bigger
\nbroadcasters can, so they can’t get as good a rate for captioning. In
\nsome cases, those broadcasters end up buying captioning from a service
\nthat perhaps isn’t as good as the service could be. <\/p>\n
NAB is working with the captioning community to try to figure out
\nwhat to do until voice recognition technology finally catches up. <\/p>\n
Marsha indicated NAB is concerned that a very high captioning
\nstandard would be a problem because new technologies don’t have a
\ngood performance record yet. NAB would like to be able to continue to
\nadopt some of the new technologies. <\/p>\n
“I think not enough has changed at this point that I think that we
\nwould agree that all of the changes that have been recommended by TDI
\nshould be adopted,” Marsha said. “I think we are willing to sit down
\nand work with both the captioners and the community, the
\nhearing-impaired, to see are there things that we can do? There will
\nbe things that we can’t agree on. That’s for sure. But if there are a
\nseries of things that we can agree on and we can take that as a
\nsolution, at least an interim solution for a three or four-year
\nperiod, then I think maybe we could sit down and get some of the
\nother problems fixed.” <\/p>\n
Marsha also suggested she’d like to see more federal grants to
\ndevelop voice recognition and other new technologies to support
\ncaptioning. <\/p>\n
~~~~~ <\/p>\n
(c)2007 by Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of
\nHearing Persons (NVRC), 3951 Pender Drive, Suite 130, Fairfax, VA
\n22030; www.nvrc.org. 703-352-9055 V, 703-352-9056 TTY, 703-352-9058
\nFax. You do not need permission to share this information, but please
\nbe sure to credit NVRC.<\/p>\n
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TDI Conference: TV Captioning Issues – Part 2 By Lise Hamlin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editor: Here’s Lise Hamlin’s writeup of Cheryl Heppner’s workshop on TV Captioning Issues. This workshop included a bunch of captioning pros, including: Moderator: Cheryl Heppner, Executive Director, NVRC…<\/p>\n