Deaf Individuals Can Be Entertained By Favorite Shows Through Closed Captioning

Television has been around for a while now, entertaining Americans up and down the country

, however for many it was simply a silent movie. In 1985 approximately 9% of the American population was hearing impaired, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Today, due to the advent of closed captioning, hearing impaired or deaf people are able to watch and understand what is being said in over half of prime time shows and even during presidential debates.

Ninety percent of the subtitles or captioning for television is provided by the non profit organization created by the federal government in 1979. They are also responsible for the subtitles that are available on VHS tapes. Unfortunately, despite all of this closed captioning, if you were to isolate a six station television market that shows approximately 18 hours of programming on each channel, only about 12-13% of those programs are actually close captioned. Over one third of closed captioned programs are children's programming.

Network executives, programmers and producers are all requested by this organization to provide captions for their programming. This isn't always easy to do. The market that can be reached through closed captioning is new enough that many producers and other network executives are just now becoming aware of it. It seems they didn't exactly realize what the hearing impaired needed in order to enjoy television.

There is an audience of almost one million in need of closed captioning, so network directors have been a bit reluctant to add captioning to their programs. Just a few years ago there were a mere 150,000 homes equipped with closed caption decoders, but that figure has definitely grown. By the end of the year, the number is expected to rise by another 30,000.

We refer to this as the chicken or the egg dilemma, as in which comes first, since it's the number of captioned programs that influences the viewer numbers, which in turn affect how many programs are captioned. An hour long program will only cost around $2,000 to closed caption. Also influencing the cost are such variables as how long it takes to produce those captions as well as how difficult the script is.

In the case of material which has been prerecorded, a decision must be made as to when the caption should come on the screen, and the duration of the time it remains to allow viewers the ability to read it. As you might expect, the more action oriented the film is, the more quickly it can be captioned. As an example, the script for a movie like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" calls for a different amount of subtitles than "A Man for All Seasons."

The Public Broadcasting Service, the Department of Education, and other businesses, provide the necessary funding for certain shows while foundations and NCI fund other programs. A deal may be struck which will call for the network to pay a third of the cost, you pay a third of the cost, and we will, then, pay a third of the cost. There are a couple of reasons for the small size of the audience for closed captioning, one being public awareness and the other being the decoder itself. When decoders were first introduced in 1980, the average cost was around $280. The cost of a decoder is now less than $250, usually around $200.

We seek out corporations and foundations which offer grants to provide decoders in the homes of those people who have compromised hearing and are considered low income. We currently have programs active in many large cities which allow people to purchase this decoder for around $35. Ideally, technology will quickly advance to a point in which TV manufacturers will include decoders by default within their TV models, not unlike how stereo sound is now included in most television sets.

Unfortunately, the hearing impaired are not really a big priority in our country. The reason for this is because they are isolated by people in our country, so they tend to withdraw and stay out of the way of society, and that isn't fair. Closed captioning is such a great feature to have because it can bring together families and help them enjoy something together for a change.

by: Sophia Thompson

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