My blogger friend Dr. Tom Goyne has several interesting posts with links to videos that Phonak, Widex, Oticon and other major hearing-aid companies are putting on the web. Great, but....Why aren't any of the hearing-aid manufacturers' videos captioned?!??! Some of the videos are really slick productions. Like Tom, I applaud their efforts to reach out directly to consumers to erase the old stigma of hearing aids and educate people about the new technologies that make hearing aids so much better than they used to be. (They are the next step in the consumer marketing trend kicked into high gear last year by Phonak, which blitzed the fashion world with its high-glam Audeo ads.) How ironic, and what a disappointment, then, to find that none of the videos are captioned. I really would love to see what that earnest Widex customer has to say in her testimonial.
Granted, a number of the videos don’t have any speaking parts or voiceovers, only some techno or new-age music with a lot of imagery and simple printed content. But if you depend on captioning as I do, it’s always nice to be notified even when nothing is being said (as when the captions say “…ominous music” with musical note signs). I think hard-of-hearing viewers should be much more vocal demanding captioning not just on TV and on DVDs, but on the web as well.
Smaller manufacturers still can be forgiven for not captioning their videos, because it’s still a little difficult and expensive to integrate captioning with your homemade YouTube videos. But when you’re spending tens of thousands of dollars on a slickly produced video ad, you can’t be forgiven for not bothering to have the ad agency put captions on the video. And soon, there will be no excuse whatsoever. Tayler Mayer, who runs the Deaf Read aggregator site, has a great blog post on how Google now lets you search for captioned videos on YouTube and anywhere else on the web, specifying “search only closed captioned videos.” He also gives a link to a download on do-it-yourself captions for your homemade videos. (Bragging note: my multimedia guru, Dave Counts, designed my Aquarius Advisers website three years ago with captioned videos. He was among the first to figure out how to caption flash videos for the web.) Isn't it time the hearing-aid manufacturers got on the captioning bandwagon?
Posted by David at 12:58 PM on Apr 25, 2008 in CAPTIONING, ISSUES & ADVOCACY
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Hey, I know a hearing guy who does that! (captions others videos)
I think part of the problem is also awareness, I wasn't even aware this was an issue. We have to remember the web is still new technology for a lot of people and we don't know all the options available out there for us.
Why don't ASl users and cultural deaf caption THEIR blogs ?
It's very disappointing to see so many nasty comments. I don't publish the nastier ones, but the one from Rod, insulting as it may be, is worth answering because people seem not to understand that I can't caption someone else's video that I link to. You can certainly go complain to Blendtec and to all the other companies that post videos without captions. If Rod had read to the end of my post, he would have seen that whatever videos I create for this site and my other business at www.AquariusAdvisers.com DO have captions.
-- Dave from Hearing Mojo
Shame on you for not having caption for your own idiot business, how can you deserve our business?
I agree hearing people should be advocating for captions, too. I predict more people will be clamoring for captions as more Baby Boomers start suffering mild hearing loss and discover how helpful captions are. That's been my experience at home - whenever I turn on the captions, no one seems to complain, except, of course, when they're done poorly (as when they cover the head of the person speaking!)
its funny that you "think hard-of-hearing viewers should be much more vocal demanding captioning not just on TV and on DVDs, but on the web as well."
I dont think you'll find one D/deaf individual who's content with the availability of captions on the 'net and didn't try to do something about it.
We need more hearing people involved in this. After all, it takes a hearing person to put the captions in for us.
