** If you’re on twitter, please something on this and post http://tinyurl.com/cchange and include #cchange in the post as well. **
Dear President-Elect Obama (And technical crew)
We greatly appreciate your efforts for accessibility, and the sentiments that you expressed on your site. We understand that transcripts are generally considered “adequate” accommodations for the Deaf and hard of hearing… However, I’d like to point something out that might not have occurred to you or to anyone on your staff.
If you are communicating to the American people using video, the way you are on change.gov, transcripts are worthless.
Perhaps that sounds a bit harsh. But it’s true. Transcripts are worthless. A speech, an address, a video appeal to the American People is not meant to be an article or the written word. They are different formats. A transcript is devoid of a good 45% of meaning for Deaf people. We rely as heavily on facial expressions and the pacing of words as most people rely on tone of voice. We read a person’s face as we read the closed captioning, alternating between lipreading and text. Between your words and your expressions.
We fought long and hard to bring closed captioning to most television shows, just in time for the internet to take over and destroy our efforts. Very little video on the web is captioned or accessible. The technology advances have catapulted us back into the dark ages of accessibility in many ways.
This does not have to be.
Adobe has added closed captioning features to Flash, and the service that you use: Youtube, has recently announced closed captioning made easy. Please take advantage of this feature.
Over 10% of the population has a hearing impairment. On top of that, many people have speech processing disorders and find that closed captions assist them in understanding what they are hearing. On top of that, many Americans speak English as a second (or third or fourth) language and find that being able to read along with what they hear helps them to better understand.
Closed captioning is tremendously valuable to a huge demographic. Please open your videos up to everyone that wishes to watch them. Please lead the Internet back in the direction of accessibility.
Thank you.
Write to the Obama team here: http://change.gov/page/s/contact and request that they close caption their videos. Transcripts were fine, but now closed captioning has come to the web and it’s time for the web to catch up.
* The videos referenced are those at http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/your_weekly_address_from_the_president_elect/
* The closed caption feature of YouTube is detailed here: http://www.youtube.com/t/captions_about
* You can view what people are saying about this either in the comments below, or on twitter here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23cchange
* We in no way blame Obama or his administration for the lack of the closed captioning. It is a new feature of YouTube and flash in general. However, it is a feature that they NEED to make use of.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I’m completely and totally in favor of captioning on change.gov - and YouTube supports captions now so I’m sure someone with Obama’s team will start adding them soon.
In the mean time, I’m lucky to be able to hear enough to follow along by opening 2 windows, scroll the transcript in one and watch the video in the other. I did this for all the SNL clips this fall.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Saraj, I do that too. There’s just so little reason why the internet has to be such a huge step backwards for the Deaf in terms of video and accessibility. *Grr*
Especially since transcripts are usually somewhat cleaned up and not a word-for-word type of thing. Of course, frequently closed captioning is cleaned up too!
November 17th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I know, I hate it and hopefully change.gov will be the start of more captioning everywhere online. The only reason it hasn’t? Well that’s commercialism at it’s finest. You’d think the FCC would be more up on adapting accessibility laws despite ‘new’ mediums. But what can you expect from an administration where the president doesn’t have a computer on his disk?
BTW: I got here via twitter, but Sara G under the sidebar contributors is me
I’m going to stick with Saraj though.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Dear Barak Obama, Please Caption Your Videos
Over on Twitter, I received a tweet from @lil-gruntlings alerting me to a video by Barak Obama that was
November 17th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Oh how funny that you came here via twitter and were already a contributor.
Good to see you back!
November 20th, 2008 at 3:57 am
Captions are essential for all but very few deaf people, who are maybe exhibiting preference rather than a need for sign language as a primary means. Just HOW many deaf cannot follow except via ASL ? we don’t know do we ? as most CAN read, then there is no real deprivation of information. Many in America use Spanish as well as English, can they insist everything is in Spanish ? or do they have to use their dual ability to follow English ?
I think the latter is the case, so why not the deaf ? They argue for BSL in the United Kingdom on the same basis, except, there simply is not the people to do the translation, so, deaf HAVE to use English, and most seem to manage OK. I think preference a distraction, and, not a NEED.
November 28th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Hey Sara,
Long time no type. If I remember correctly, you live in Boston right or near NYC?
Relating to captions, I do think they are beneficial but also when it comes to transcripts I can deal with those because it allows me to glance over what was actually said in case I missed out the live speeches and whatnot. For ASL, it’s almost impossible for me to follow through with a live interpreter so I have to rely on lip reading or captions.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
hwy welcome back Sara
just put it up on twitter there for u too 