Captioning

It’s About Time: Entire 2011 Super Bowl Broadcast AND All Its Advertisements Will Have Closed Captioning

After years of intense lobbying by the entire hard-of-hearing community, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) has gotten a commitment from the National Football League (NFL) and FOX Broadcasting to provide closed captions for the entire Super Bowl XLV broadcast this Sunday—including all advertisements that will be aired.

Everyone knows the Super Bowl is more than a football game. In fact, in the Madison Avenue circles where I used to move, it’s more a Super Bowl of advertising than an athletic contest. It’s where the most creative minds in media and entertainment show off their best and brightest ideas every year. That’s why when I lost most of my hearing, it enraged me that so few of the ads had captions. Read more

Competition Among Captioned Telephone Services Heats Up With New ClearCaptions Service From Purple Communications

Purple Communications, which has been providing voice and video relay services and other assistance to deaf and hard-of-hearing consumers for over a decade, is broadening its portfolio with its new ClearCaptions IP closed captioned telephone service. Captioning of real-time telephone conversations over the Internet is currently available from two other vendors, Sprint Relay and Hamilton Relay, both of whom rely on the WebCaptel service developed by UltraTec. Purple Communications (formerly GoAmerica), which will offer the service under its FCC charter as an approved provider of Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS), is creating some competition and increasing awareness of telephone captioning with its entirely new ClearCaptions service.

ClearCaptions is currently in its beta-test or trial phase but is accepting new users who can register at the ClearCaptions web site. IP captioned telephone service lets you view real-time captions of your phone conversations on your Internet-connected computer (or your Internet-connected handheld phone or tablet). All you have to do is notify your relay service provider that you are making a call, and the service provider monitors both ends of the conversation and, aided by voice-recognition software, provides you with a real-time transcript of the call. That way, if you’re like me and tend to miss anywhere from 20 to 80 percent of a phone conversation depending on the quality of the connection and any background noise that might be present, you get to fill in the blanks with the transcript. Read more

Hamilton CapTel Offers 800i Captioned Telephone With Free TV Ears Thrown In For Only $99

Want to save $600 and get two of the hottest assistive listening devices (ALDs) available? Hamilton Relay’s Hamilton CapTel business unit is making a limited-time offer for its CapTel 800i captioned telephone, bundled with a TV Ears system, for only $99 combined. Hamilton CapTel has been special-offering its $595-list-price 800i captioned telephone system for $99 for a while, and now it is throwing in the highly popular wireless television amplifier from TV Ears for free.

All you have to do is go to the HamiltonCaptel web site’s special-offer landing page, grab the coupon/promo code, click through to distributor Weitbrecht Communications’ (WCI) fulfillment page, put the 800i in your shopping cart, then make sure to enter the coupon code in the “Redeem a discount coupon” space on the shopping cart page — the TV Ears product, which usually retails for $99.95, will appear as a second item in your basket with a discounted price of $0. It takes a few steps, and I don’t know how long the special offer will be available, but if you or anyone you know would benefit from either or both products, it’s a great deal.

Hamilton CapTel and TV Ears got together at the Consumer Electronics Show, where TV Ears returned the compliment by announcing it will bundle the 800i phone with the TV Ears system and a variety of personal sound amplifer products (PSAPs) and entry-level hearing aids. (More on that announcement later). The two companies make a welcome fit for hard-of-hearing consumers looking for cost-effective help with their hearing. TV Ears serves the huge market of people with mild hearing loss, positioning their easy-to-use TV-amplification headset as a “gateway” for those who might later migrate to more powerful assistive listening devices and/or hearing aids.

Hamilton CapTel has been a leader in delivering captioned telephone solutions to consumers, and the 800i is a great product for anyone who has trouble understanding phone conversations. The 800i plugs into a standard Internet connection, which enables you to initiate a free WebCapTel call, and the unit’s LCD displays lets a real-time transcript of the words of the person on the other end of the call while you conduct a regular conversation with the handset over a normal phone line. While Hamilton CapTel usually serves customers with more severe hearing loss, while TV Ears is for people with mild hearing loss, you can envision the same person using both. The 800i product makes the WebCapTel service easy to use, so that people with moderate hearing loss who only have occasional problems with the phone are more likely to use it; and the TV Ears product has enough of a volume boost to be of help even for many regular hearing-aid users with moderate hearing loss.

I plan on trialing both products and will let you know how they work.

U.S. Senate Passes Twenty-First Century Communications And Video Accessibility Act Of 2010 By Unanimous Consent

The U.S. Senate passed the 21st Century Communications and video Accessibility Act (S. 3304) by unanimous consent, virtually assuring that the disability rights act guaranteeing access by deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind and vision-impaired consumers to all forms of media will become law.

Passage was expected after the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved its version of the same bill, H.R. 3101, last week, and now all that is required is reconciliation of the two bills, a final vote in the House and President Obama’s signature. In what House sponsor Rep. Edward Markey has called “online ramps to the Internet” for people with disabilities, the new law will, among many other things:

• Require captioned television programs to be captioned when delivered over the Internet.
• Authorize the FCC to require 7 hours per week of TV video description for vision-impaired people on the top 4 network channels and top 5 cable channels nationwide.
• Allocate up to $10 million per year for communications equipment used by individuals who are deaf-blind.
• Require devices of any size to be capable of displaying closed captioning, delivering available video description, and making emergency information accessible.
• Require accessible user controls for televisions and set-top boxes, and easy access to closed captioning and video description.

The new law is a huge step forward for people with disabilities in an age when equal access to Internet services is an absolute must for anyone to successfully earn a living and enjoy the quality of life that other accommodations have enabled ever since passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) 20 years ago.

Big Movie Theater Chains See Writing On Wall And Start To Provide More Closed Captions

On the same day that the U.S. Justice Department was asking for comments on a proposed rule requiring movie theaters to provide closed captions for hard-of-hearing customers along with audio descriptions for blind theatergoers, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley was finalizing an agreement with three of the biggest movie theater chains to dramatically increase accessibility options at movie theaters throughout the state.

It’s no coincidence that the major theater chains are finally agreeing to provide more accessibility services at the same time the government is making noises about strengthening its mandates. In Massachusetts, the agreement was a settlement of a formal civil rights complaint brought by deaf and blind residents alleging discrimination because of the absence of accessible technology.

The Justice Department put theater owners on notice it was considering changing its regulations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to mandate closed captioning and audio descriptions at all theater locations. In a notice published in the Federal Register, the Justice Department noted the slow progress the industry had made in providing accessibility options in spite of advances in technology making captioning and audio descriptions easier than in the past:

The Department is concerned about what appears to be a significant disconnect between the production of movies that have captioning and video description capabilities and the actual exhibition or availability of such movies to individuals with sensory disabilities. The Department also is concerned that even when captioned and video described movies are exhibited, their showings appear to be relegated to the middle of the week or midday showings.

The publication of the notice about the proposed rule change is the start of a three-to-six month process that will include comments by all parties, hearings, and ultimately a decision to revise the regulations or maintain the status quo.

The consent agreement in Massachusetts may indicate which way the political winds are blowing and presage similar agreement to increase accessibility nationally. Read more

After A Five-Year Wait, CapTel Real-Time Captioned Telephone Service Is Finally Available In Massachusetts

Nearly five years ago, I wrote, “I’m still a CapTel wannabee.” That was when the 32 states in the U.S. that had already approved the captioned telephone service did not yet include my home state of Massachusetts. Today I’m happy to say the wait is over. Starting on August 1, Hamilton Telecommunications will start providing its Hamilton CapTel service to residents of Massachusetts.

The CapTel captioned telephone service provides real-time captions of telephone conversations displayed on your phone. Users conference in a relay-service operator to provide a computer-aided transcription, which appears on an LCD display on their phones.

Why the long wait in Massachusetts? Politics, as usual. Enabling legislation was required to pave the way for the service, and our state legislature was slow off the mark. (Maybe that’s one of the reasons Massachusetts’ famed “Route 128 Technology Corridor” is a shadow of its former self these days.) The good news though is that I’ve been able to use another CapTel service for a while now, ever since the WebCapTel service went online. With WebCaptel, you don’t need a special phone but use your Internet connection instead to display the captions, and it works well. You can use it with your desktop or portable computer, or even with your iPhone. Web CapTel is available from Sprint WebCapTel as well as from Hamilton WebCapTel.

But even though I’m happy with the WebCapTel service, I’m sorely tempted to buy the CapTel phone manufactured by Ultratec and sign up for the service. It looks like a slick product that would be fun to use. In any case, being able to “see what they say” is the best way to avoid all those costly errors you must endure when a poor phone connection or a bad hearing day makes it impossible to get through a normal phone call.

U.S. House Passage Of Telecommunications Access Act Brings Universal Closed Captioning And Other Services A Giant Step Closer

The U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of H.R. 3101, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, was a huge bi-partisan(348 to 23) vote of confidence in the commitment of our society to support the right of equal access to commonly used public services — especially the airwaves and Internet — no matter what disabilities a citizen might have. The vote, on the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, ensures equal access for deaf, hard-of-hearing, and blind consumers to the media.

For hard-of-hearing people, it requires that TV programs distributed on the web provide closed captions, that remote controls have a button to easily access closed captioning on broadcast and pay TV, and that telecom equipment used to make calls over the internet be compatible with hearing aids, just as land line phones and cell phones must be hearing aid compatible. Mandating more captioning of popular web videos will bring the day of universal closed captioning in all media a huge step closer.

“Two decades ago, Americans with disabilities couldn’t get around if buildings weren’t wheelchair accessible; today it’s about being Web accessible. The ADA mandated physical ramps into buildings,” said U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), the sponsor of the legislation. “Today, individuals with disabilities need online ramps to the Internet so they can get to the Web from wherever they happen to be.”

The U.S. Senate version of the bill, S.3304, the Equal Access to 21st Century Communications Act, has been introduced by Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) and reported out by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Given the overwhelming support in the House, prospects for passage in the Senate and the President signing a combined version of the bill into law are good. Both the House and Senate versions also provide many protections for blind Americans, including audible descriptions of on-screen action on television and making cable TV program guides and selection menus accessible to people with vision loss.

An Official Complaint About Poor Video Captions Is Actually A Vote For Better Captions — Make Your Vote Count!

Everyone who needs open or closed captions to understand the TV, DVDs and web videos knows captioning services in general could stand substantial improvement. Ever since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandated captioning for almost all television shows, many hard-of-hearing people have come to depend on them. On my home set I keep the “CC1″ setting on all the time. But that doesn’t mean the captions always work. In fact, as often as not the captions provided by broadcasters — especially for talk shows, the news, or other live broadcasts — are woefully delayed or infuriatingly wrong. But I recently realized that bellyaching to family and friends was not going to result in better captions, and I discovered there’s a better way to complain. You can start with the FCC itself — there’s a simple online form on the FCC.gov web site that makes it easy to detail your complaint. The form has room for plenty of information, so make sure you jot down the specific problem you experienced, at what time, on what station, and with what television show. And make sure you have the contact information for your cable or broadcast service provider. Read more

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