subject: A Major Breakthrough: Closed Captioning for the Hearing Impaired [print this page] Television has provided information, excitement and entertainment to American families for over thirty years, but for many people, the sounds of the television simply could not be heard. The most recent estimate given puts nine percent of the United States population, or some 21.2 million people, as being deaf or 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.
In 1979, a non profit foundation was developed by the U.S. government, and they are responsible for 90 percent of the TV shows' subtitles and captioning. Not only have they captioned the television programs, they have also placed subtitles on thousands of movies as well. A typical television market with six stations, each running 18 hours of shows, will have between 12 and 13 percent of the programs available with subtitles. Out of these shows that are captioned, a third of them are children's shows.
One of the biggest tasks that this organization must perform is to convince a show's producers, programmers and network executives that a show should be closed captioned. Some of these people are surprisingly resistant to this idea. For many networks the deaf market is something they have never really considered.
Upon being contacted, they admitted they had not been aware of the needs of the hearing impaired and deaf audiences.Some of them expressed reluctance at this time to caption their programs because the current estimate for a close captioned audience is close to one million people. The one million estimate comes from the number of decoders which are known to be in use, which is 150,000 homes.
This number is likely to increase by 30,000 by the end of the year however.The programs that are captioned are based on the number of viewers that need the feature in order to enjoy the programs. The cost of providing closed captioning to a one hour program can run from $1,500 to $2,200. This number varies because each captioning job is uniquely based on how long they have to produce the captions as well as how hard 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. Programs that feature a lot of action sequences can be captioned more quickly.
Subtitling 'A Man For All Seasons' is very different that subtitling something like 'Avatar'.Certain programs are completely funded by PBS, the Department of Education, and other corporations. Other programs are provided by NCI and other foundations. Many foundations will pay for a certain amount of the captioning expenses, providing that other institutions provide some money as well. 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.
The decoder originally cost $280 when it was introduced in 1980. The average is now just about $200.We are constantly seeking foundation or corporation grants to fund provide decoders for hard of hearing and deaf individuals with a low income. Programs are currently being run in major cities to reduce the cost of the decoder to as low as $35. The goal ultimately is, that with the cost of technology reduced enough, television manufacturers would be encouraged to provide at least one model with the decoder already built in much the same way as is stereo capability.
Suffering from a hearing impairment is like having an invisible disability for many Americans. The deaf and hard of hearing may become isolated within a culture of their own primarily because they are the largest of the physically disabled groups in the country, but with a disability which is not visible. By providing the deaf and hard of hearing with the ability to enjoy what everyone else in the room is watching, closed captions really do help the whole family to come together.
A Major Breakthrough: Closed Captioning for the Hearing Impaired
