Guest Blog Posts Invited!

Captioning inclusion has progressed over the years, perhaps especially during the past 3-5 years. What’s your experience? Do you have captioning where and when you need it? Is the quality good-enough?

How about submitting a blog post here? About any aspect of your captioned life….

Send it to CCACaptioning@gmail.com soon.

It could be about Media captioning, Live Event captioning, and these days, Live Streams (videos) online for so many things from work meetings to school classroom teaching to cultural events of all sorts – almost too much at times!

CCAC SAYS,

LET’S TALK CAPTIONING

#CAPTIONEVERYTHING

HTTP://CCACAPTIONING.ORG IS THE CCAC WEBSITE

Captioning Is Our Language. For Hearing People too.

To follow up on the previous post, here’s an article about the CCAC captioning advocacy project that grew from a question on the CCAC Facebook page, “Where do you wish you had captioning all the time?”

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D-8WtTJYZpl0tdvKcVrp__Nyu9HJpMukCOhlre-3Y2Q/edit

We hope it’s useful for your own captioning advocacy.

If you share the link, please let us know where. CCACaptioning@gmail.com

Let’s Talk Captioning!

#CaptionEverything

http://CCACaptioning.org

Where Do You Wish You Had Captioning All the Time?

Greetings!

We recently asked our not-unusual question in a new way on Facebook, and the number of replies was much larger than normal, and most illuminating.

We used to ask, every few months or so, ‘where do you need captioning'” and many diid reply…and yet:

This time we asked “Where do you wish you had captioning all the time?”

and the response rate is huge, and while the answers will not surprise any of us, it’s fascinating, and important (!) that we (all of us I suggest) ‘wish’ we had captioning in so many places all the time.

We wish we did not have to ask for it all the time, and many of us (me too) are not asking for it enough (for some understandable reasons), and what can we all do about this?

Wishing is good! It’s what we deserve for equal rights, our civil rights, full citizenship, to be able to participate and give back too. For human needs for inclusion and belonging, vital for healthy living.

Meanwhile, for those using FB, the page with the replies is here – the 2nd or 3rd conversation down. if you go there, please “follow” and ‘like” the page – https://www.facebook.com/ccac.captioning/

We’ll aim to write up a short paper with the replies, yet you can all guess what many of them are! e.g. all over the Internet (e.g. webinars); on all transportation (e.g. airport announcements); theater, cinema, church, emergency/disaster videos, e.g. live news updates; stand-up comedy…and much more.

LET’S TALK CAPTIONING!

CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.COM

HTTP://CCACAPTIONING.ORG

SUCCESS STORIES FROM OREGON AND WASHINGTON – FOR CAPTIONING INCLUSION OF COURSE!

We will try to copy this slide presentation given at the recent ALDA Conference in Portland, Oregon. It is excellent. Bravo to all involved for their successes, and for all their ideas, time, energies, and persistence over time!

Go to this link (should open as a public document). https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_vnTaZ_7cjsVTl5aEczREd3NU4xdVVxT2l1dm05a3JBOXBn/view?usp=sharing

Questions to the two organizations – their web addresses are in the slides.

AS CCAC SAYS, “LET’S TALK CAPTIONING!”

#CAPTIONEVERYTHING

 

 

Auto-Captioning – Time to Learn More

CCAC is pleased to offer a new resource – a listing of auto-captioning systems (machine captioning systems). They are called by various names (ASR for automatic speech recognition, dictation, speech-to-text) and even captioning. They are probably called machine subtitling systems in many countries too.

Here is what we added today on the CCAC webpages for “Resources” and “Advocacy” –

HEAR THIS! CCAC begins LIST OF LINKS for AUTO-CAPTIONING https://bit.ly/auto-captioning

Additions, edits, corrections or comments?  Send them to CCACaptioning@gmail.com. 

Machine systems have pro’s and con’s – some work for some voices best, in some but not other situations best, and have different features and details to explore and try.

Using a captioning professional provider still is the best way to reach full quality for live captioning, yet machine systems have improved over recent years, and are handy in some places (if not too noisy, if the audio is excellent, if not too many different voices, if you have good acoustics, etc.) For transcriptions and post-production captioning for videos, when someone can edit to correct and use punctuation on the machine-made transcript, that’s handy too. 

CCACaptioning.org 

Let’s Talk Captioning!

#CaptionEverything

CCAC members use an active forum online (a google group) if you care to join from the CCAC website. 

(New CCAC resource, August 2018, with thanks to Mathew Call and L. Storck.)

TRANSPORTATION TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS!

AUGUST 2018
From one CCAC Member:
When I went to Sydney last weekend to attend the NSW Deaf Poker championships (don’t laugh its a very serious event!) I had to use the trains from Sydney Airport to Parramatta (a long way out in the western suburbs).

Coming back to the airport on the Sunday, due to weekend trackwork I had to get off the train that would usually be a direct route 3-4 times and then go to a different platform as they were changing things on the run.

There was only an audio announcement made – their electronic screens did not update as they were doing these changes off the cuff…

The only way I worked out how to get to the airport was to follow people on the train with airport luggage! Such a frustrating experience and if I had of been going the other way (away from the airport) I may have ended up in Cabramatta! (a very different part of the city)

You’d think that this wouldn’t happen in 2018 but I was shocked by this and it was a very disappointing experience…I ended up catching a taxi for more than half the trip (at significant expense)…

==
CCAC here: Another member suggested sending the taxi receipt to the train company – yet even if that were easy, and even if they paid without a fuss, it would not compensate for the worry, and the lack of inclusion – the lack of real time captioning for many to fully understand what was happening. Live quality captioning in a proper announcement system is not hard to create, and it does not cost huge amount of money either. Our hunch is that anyone who speaks clearly into a high quality dictation system (speech to text) could provide adequate information to all with hearing loss, and for many others such as visitors from other countries, people with other audio-perceptual needs (there are many). Even better, to contract with a professional captioning company to have a professional captioner “on call” to provide live “captioning” for any emergency situations (in some cases it will save lives also).

Travels are a most important part of everyday life!

What advocacy can we help you with?
Watch the CCAC film – travel is in there (airports).
Find the page on the CCAC website, and….
Shall we aim for a new video just about TRAVEL/TRANSPORTATION – let’s count the ways, share stories.

Another CCAC Member added:
I was on the WA State Ferry system the other day and in fact, an announcement was made I could not understand at all. With my CI, most announcements (and conversations that are not one-on-one) are “heard” but a complete blur for me. I saw a staff person walking around, asked him what was going on, and he spoke with me- at length it turned out – his wife had just seen an audiologist for hearing aid, etc. Then he told me there was text on two screens on the ferry for announcements – then, he pointed to the screen nearest us, and said, “Oh no, it’s turned off!” – “Well, that’s no good is it?” – right!
The monitor was completely off. I am sure he went back to tell the captain or whomever (I hope).

Another CCAC Member: …have sworn off travel to some places because of that horrible sinking sensation that I am going to be forever lost in this foreign place where no one knows me and no one will find me. Once in London, someone I could not lipread put me in a cab after I discovered on a lonely dock that the ferries were cancelled that day but the concierge at the hotel hadn’t bothered to look.. . thank goodness for that stranger!

#CaptionEverything

Readers – what do you think about all this? what can be done? your story?

#CAPTIONEVERYTHING

EMAIL: CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.COM

Cinema Captioning – Accessible Movies

We have a new CCAC member who has her own blog space, and this one is a topic of long interest to millions globally – read https://reelwords.ca/editing-open-captions-movies-peelers/

Added information and some of CCAC advocacy over the years, continuing:

http://ccacaptioning.org/show-captions-cinema-captioning-advocacy-november-2/

Have you read over the CCAC webpages recently? Any questions? We love to talk!

http://CCACaptioning,org

 

 

CAPTIONING ADVOCACY GUEST BLOGS INVITED!

HELLO WORLD
BEEN BUSY DOING CAPTIONING ADVOCACY
HOW ABOUT SOME GUEST BLOGPOSTS FROM YOU AND YOU AND YOU?
SEND TO CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.COM

YOUR ADVOCACY
YOUR NEEDS FOR CAPTIONING
MEDIA CAPTIONING
LIVE EVENT CAPTIONING
YOUR WORK AS A PROVIDER OF QUALITY CAPTIONING
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
GOVERNMENT, EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT, INTERNET, TELECOMMUNICATIONS, TRANSPORTATION, ETC.

LET’S TALK CAPTIONING!
CCACAPTIONING.ORG
FIND US ALSO VIA –
​ Official Non-Profit Citizen Captioning Advocates. CCAC Mission-Inclusion of Quality Captioning Universally.
twitter.com/CCACaptioning, http://www.facebook.com/ccac.captioning, http://www.youtube.com/user/CCACORG/videos, http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Have-Deaf-Love-Captioning/dp/1515135799

SAME LANGUAGE SUBTITLES VITAL!

EVER enjoy a foreign film with great captioning until they start speaking in English for a short time?

Then subtitles stop – ugh! This happened to me the other night on Amazon prime videos. It also happens on Netflix. Double ugh.

What we need to advocate for is SAME LANGUAGE SUBTITLES, and we need same language subtitles on ALL VIDEOS of course.

For example, videos and live streams online now from so many GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS all over the world, including from the White House.

We need same language subtitles to enjoy all our British TV shows. Many times the accents are a little confusing. Read this about the dilemma: https://web.archive.org/web/20080321131957/http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/blink/2007/05/translated_from_the_british.php

Add your comments please. Join the CCAC. Let’s advocate. Let’s Talk Captioning! Equal communication access is the law, and the right thing to do. Go to http://CCACaptioning.org

COMMUNICATION IS LIFE.

CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.COM

Access with Live Captions at Edinburg Festival

Open and enjoy reading about this accessible festival – a wonderful report from the Captioning Provider – thank you Claire!  The link has some nice photos and more:

http://clairehillrealtime.com/captioned-performances-at-the-edinburgh-festival-fringe/

 

Let’s Talk Captioning! Join the CCAC and bring your reports, questions, ideas, and captioning advocacy ideas – we are all advocates!

CCAC does not DO captioning – we advocate, educate, raise awareness and — repeat.

Go to http://CCACaptioning.org/join/ 

Captions (Subtitles) are now included in a number of places – thanks to CCAC energies and those of many others over past years. Lots more to do – it’s missing in so many places still.