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

Captions! Captions! Everywhere?

Cindy Camp Jacksonville State University

Bill StarkCaptioned 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 1992-93.

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 1988-89.

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

www.cfv.org

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.”