Captions! Captions! Everywhere? Cindy Camp Jacksonville State University Bill Stark Captioned Media Program

Captions everywhere? NO!  Less than 15% of the educational videos available for purchase are captioned.  Even fewer educational DVD, CD-ROM, and other media are captioned.

What is captioning? One definition: “The process of converting the audio content of a film, video, CD-ROM, DVD, webcast, live event, and other productions into text which is displayed on a screen, monitor, or player. Captions not only display words as the text equivalent of spoken dialogue or narration, but also include sound effects, speaker identification, and music.”

Q: Who needs captions? A: Persons with a hearing loss.  28 million Americans are deaf or hard of hearing (d/hh); they represent about 10% of all Americans.  23,000 d/hh students were enrolled in postsecondary education in  Percentage of full-time college freshmen reporting hearing disabilities ranged from.8% (1988) to.5% (2000).

Q: Who needs captions? A: Persons not fluent in English.  Another 22 million Americans are foreign- born, many of whom speak languages other than English. They may seek captioned programming as one way to enhance their mastery of English.  490,933 international students were enrolled in colleges and universities in

Who needs captions?  More than 3 million K-12 students are Limited English Proficient.  44 million American adults have only rudimentary reading and writing skills.  18 million Americans are under 5 years of age, many of whom will learn to read faster if they are given opportunity to watch captioning on children's programs.

Who needs captions?  Visual Learners  LD/ADD/ADHD Individuals  Senior Citizens Everyone benefits !

Common Excuses  The information won’t be on the test.  It’s only a short clip.  The information is in the textbook and lecture as well.  The interpreter can just tell the student what is going on.  I can’t find a captioned version.  This TV doesn’t show captions.  It costs too much to caption a video.  It takes too much time to add captions.

Common Misconceptions  The caption decoder in a TV is a magic device that shows captions for all videos. All you have to do is know how to turn it on.  Attaching a caption decoder or turning on the internal decoder requires a degree in engineering.  Captions are distracting to hearing students.

Some Important Laws  The Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990  The Americans with Disabilities Act  The Telecommunications Act of 1996  The Rehabilitation Act--Section 508  FCC Report and Order: Digital Television (DTV) Closed-Captioning

Where can I find captioned videos?  Free-Loan: The Captioned Media Program (CMP)  Purchase: “Bowker’s Complete Video Directory” and the CMP database.

Encouraging the Use of Captioned Media  Explain the benefits.  Explain the law.  Remind them each semester.  Make captioned media available and only purchase captioned media.  Make decoders available.  Encourage them to sign up for a CMP account.  Work with your administration to establish caption-use policies.

What do you call that? Types of captioning  Closed Captions  Subtitles  Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH)

What are the differences? Styles of captioning  Pop-up  Roll-up Methods of captioning  Off-line  On-line

Ready to caption?  Although you plan to purchase only captioned videos from now on, what do you do about the many uncaptioned videos you have on campus? -Outsource -Caption them yourself

You get what you pay for!  The most important thing to remember when deciding to caption in-house or to outsource is QUALITY!  Is less than the best, “good enough” for your students?  Do we want to satisfy the letter of the law or the spirit of the law?

Captioning Guidelines  Open-captioned format  Pop-on method  Upper and lower-case letters with descenders  Proportional spacing  32 characters per line  Helvetica Medium (or similar) The Captioning Key

What’s wrong with that?

In-House or Outsourcing  Turn-around time  Up-front cost vs. long-term cost  Time and personnel  Volume : How much? How often?  Quality

In-House Captioning Equipment  Captioning Software--$4,995  Hardware--$1,200  Video Capture--$75  Longitudinal Time Code Reader Card-- $295  Optional Time Base Corrector--$495  Total--$7,060 –You also need 2 VCRs and a computer.

In-House–Additional Costs  Personnel –Someone who can transcribe the video. –Someone with technical expertise to encode the captions. –Someone with skills in language mechanics and captioning techniques.  Time –Enough time to complete the project (an hour-long video requires from 8 to 20 hours of work).

Questions captioning agencies will ask you:  How long is the video?  What format is it? (VHS, Beta, etc.)  What type of captions do I want?  When do I need it finished?

Questions you should ask the captioning agency:  How much will it cost? –What format you send. –What type of captions you want. –If you provide a script. –If you want a master only or multiple copies.  How long is the turn-around time?  Do they allow for a proofing phase?

What does it cost to caption?  For a 30-minute video: –VHS original. –They transcribe the video. –Pop-on closed captions or subtitles. $840$810$755$700$625$550$240

So what’s the difference?  “Educational videos don’t need to be works of art. You just need words on the screen.”  “We don’t check spellings for anything. For proper names, we spell phonetically as best we can. After all, if a hearing kid hears the name of a foreign river, they don’t know how it is spelled either.”

Finally, ready to caption! Now that you have decided how you will add captions to your videos... Can you? Is it legal? Is it fair? Is it moral? Can I get away with it?

Copyright Laws QUESTION: Is it breaking the copyright laws to add captions to a commercially-produced video shown in class? ANSWER: Yes! But you can ask for permission. QUESTION: Will “fair use” exclusions allow captioning because the students are disabled? ANSWER: Probably not.

Copyright vs. Fair Use  “Fair use” does allow reproduction of copyrighted works for nonprofit educational use. However, “fair use” limits include: –How much of a work can be reproduced. –How long the copies can be kept. –Alteration of the work.

No captions? QUESTION: Does this mean I cannot legally add captions to an educational video? ANSWER: No. It simply means you need to contact the holder of the copyright and obtain permission... IN WRITING.

What about …?  DVDs  CD-ROMs  Streaming Video on the Internet  Video Conferencing

Digital Media Captioning

How do you feel now?

How does a deaf student feel? Tina L. “I cannot live without closed captioning.”