CAPTIONING CULTURE – YES, WE ARE!

OUR CAPTIONING CULTURE

 

Do you know the origin of the word caption? The old history of the word is to capture or seize. How wonderful is that?! It’s a good fit for text that captures the meaning of conversations for us – for communications and relationships – for life! Seize the day, yet first, capture all the words.

Captioning is truly much more than a mere label for a photo or a tiny bit of text in bubbles of a cartoon. Seize the words! Communicate! Use captioning on all media, and real time for life. Captioning is language. It’s speaking with text. It’s written, readable, and interactive.

By the time automatic captioning systems perfect automatic text for all human voices in all languages, we probably will have a pill to reverse deafness! (Some want it, and some don’t. We respect those choices and differences.) Meanwhile…

For decades, until small and affordable machines translate any voice and all voices in groups into quality text, real time, as we all speak, we suggest we are a Captioning Culture, we live in it, we breathe it, and we advocate to expand it.

Read on…

People who need and deserve quality captioning every day (not only for television, cinema, and videos) are not only people with hearing loss or deafness. Millions more able citizens, in all countries, use captioning to enhance learning – learning to read, learning new languages, and for searches online for knowledge. Yet for many, captioning (or subtitles, the same idea) allows access and inclusion for millions with hearing loss or deafness. 

And yet…

The word “captioning” has no respect! It’s beginning to earn respect, yet we have a long way to go. Forty-five years since the beginnings of relay telephones (text calling), and still, millions want more quality captioning for everyday life, and the sooner the better. No thanks, we don’t need a wheelchair, we need captioning.

Did you say a Culture of Captioning?

Yes. Each language in the world, is a vital and essential ingredient of that culture. Many groups are interested in the development of “culture”  – not only anthropologists who study cultures professionally, but also sociologists, psychologists, politicians, economists, educators, and deaf people also.

Those who use Sign Language (SL), are deaf people who have fought bravely to define and protect their own culture and language. They talk about SL of their country, and about their own deaf identity. There is also an established international SL now.

The culture of the deaf, sometimes called Deaf Culture, deaf-hood, or a deaf identity, has other building blocks also. It’s not only built around a sign language, since it includes behaviors, customs, attitudes – some typical ingredients of any culture. Nevertheless, the language, SL, is of highest value.

Now we suggest a Captioning Culture. Captioning is already an international language since it’s easily translated into the language you need (text can be translated by professionals, and even automatic translations now with new technology are often much better than automatic machine-only captioning).

Indeed, we refer to captioning as our language, as the world’s language.  What other building blocks are there for a Captioning Culture. What behaviors, attitudes, and expectations, and cultural norms are included?

One behavior or value is reading and literacy. In fact, captioning boosts literacy. Getting the word out globally about this (pun intended) is not easy, yet pockets of people in the USA, in India, and in other countries are captioning inclusion advocates for literacy (not for deafness and hearing loss). We belong together however.

Another attitude or value in a captioning culture is access and inclusion, and while insisting on captioning, we are open to many languages. Inclusion means that people with the full range of abilities (and dis-abilities) are valuable citizens, and societies are obliged to find resources for inclusion and using their combined many talents. Of course this attitude is not unique to our captioning culture.

A third item in a Culture of Captioning is an important behavior – we “speak.”  Most of us do. And if not, that’s okay of course too. We are oral. Many of us, among our mega-millions, speak just the same as “hearing” people because hearing loss or deafness occurred after learning to speak (deafened we are, or hearing loss of various degrees).  We don’t have an accent. We may have a language accent if we were born in one country and live now in another, yet for the most part, we haven’t accents different from all the beautiful accents of regional and national hearing people.

Our identity is mixed. We identify primarily as citizens of the country we live in, and as users of that country’s language. We speak that language as our primary language. We understand and support sign language and “deaf culture” among friends, colleagues, and others, yet we do not enjoy accusations of “resisting” sign language or “ignoring” deaf culture. We are who we are. Some are bilingual with other languages, some are multi-cultural, some use sign language also. Our identities, after all is said and done, are multi-faceted (woman, explorer, mother, captioning user, etc.)

What other items describe a Captioning Culture? We are cross-cultural in the sense that we know that people who are deaf, hearing, hard of hearing, and deafened, as well as many deaf-blind, and others with different visual and learning differences, all need and use captioning for some situations. Entertainments such as films, videos and theaters are good examples. We all need captioning – quality captioning – for these human and healthy experiences.

At the same time, we stress and value advocacy for “real time” or “live” captioning as our receptive language – this is less well understood and much less available for many. We use real-time captioning (called CART or STTR) as our language when we are in school, at work, in meetings and conferences, during community events, political rallies, anything that’s happening!

We do not use sign language. We need captioning. Real time means immediate speech-to-text translation with display of the words (everything everyone is saying). Some say live transcription, some say fast writing, and some call it interpretation).  All this is accomplished with new technologies and always along with professional providers – captioners with the right training, experience, knowledge of systems and more – to serve this need. They are the motors of our culture, and we users (consumers) are the hungry communication users.

Join our culture – all welcome.

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http://CCACaptioning.org – now is the time to join the CCAC, the place to be for captioning advocacy – join from the website

http://CaptionMatch.com – ask for captioning or CART you need now, soon, or in the new year, it’s not far away!

What Does Captioning Advocacy Mean?

ADVOCACY

In our framework, there are two main categories of advocacy – legal advocacy, and grass roots citizen advocacy. CCAC embodies grass-roots advocacy done by CCAC members and many others in many different places and in a variety of ways.

Legal advocacy takes the legal route with attorneys who are indeed “advocates.” Many times, there is no significant change or progress, in some cultures, for some issues, without legal challenges. Legislative initiatives also require legal input.

Grass-roots advocacy also accomplishes change, and significant change, in different ways. Grass roots advocacy also may bolsters future legal efforts, when and if they become required.

From the dictionary (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/advocate), advocates are those who (1) speak or write in favor of, support, urge or recommend publicly (something that is important), (2) speak and write publicly in defense of, or support of, a person or a cause, (3) plead for or in behalf of another, or (4) pleads the cause of another in the court of law.

IN THE CCAC

In the CCAC, advocacy means asking for something needed (captioning), explaining why it is needed, pursuing the request to educate others, and aiming to ensure inclusion of quality captioning. Simply this.

Simply? It all depends on many factors, e.g., the person asking, the others who listen or not, the situation, the timing, and many more dynamics, both human and technology. Yet simply asking – that is a huge first step. Asking is good advocacy.

Advocacy is done for oneself, for others, and for future generations. What each individual shares in the CCAC community builds into future advocacy, understanding and action.

Consider only one example — asking for LIVE CAPTIONS (also called CART) in a classroom. If one family advocates for full verbatim speech-to-text – equal communication access – for a student who needs it, that advocacy will educate many others, and the advocacy efforts themselves (lots of energy, persistence, and finding allies) will build future equal rights for all.

Photo of L. Storck, CCAC founder and president, at Conference in Vienna, Austria 2011

We are all advocates! Some consumers, others providers, and many using captioning for many reasons beyond hearing loss and deafness.

CCACAPTIONING.ORG

CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.COM

What’s It Like… to experience CART/Live Event Captioning for the very first time?

WONDERFUL to see this again on social media today. Thanks Michele. LS, CCACaptioning.org and the interview she refers to is here – http://www.saywhatclub.com/newsletter/jan2011/interview.html

Smiling – because we’ve come a long way! and continue with the same mission and group culture online. Readers – join the CCAC today! http://CCACaptioning.org/join/

Absence of Captioning is a Cage. Exclusion is Punishment.

“I think it’s quite true that very often people who try to break out of their perceived cage do get punished for it, whatever that cage is.” *

Is our hearing loss (or deafness) a cage where the absence of sounds are the bars holding us back? The lack of speech comprehension in people with hearing loss befuddles our human interactions.

We are stretched to “belong” – where do we belong? Do we dare to break out of our cages? Face punishment of some sort from one of many potential angles?

Yes, many of us do. We know we do not belong in a cage.

Some find a community of sign language users. Most millions do not use sign language however. Some with milder hearing loss find comfort and support in hearing loss groups, or with hearing aids and other “listening” technologies. Some undergo surgery for implants and the average improvement is about 55% hearing in the implanted ear (for some, better, for some worse), depending, as with all devices, on the situation, the voices, and the acoustics. For most, there is no cure or correction such as eyeglasses – we are far from that still.

And many others, with greater hearing loss, deafness, or knowing hearing loss is progressively worse over the years, where do we belong?

We don’t ask for this human difference. We rage, or we are proud, or we fall someplace along that spectrum, in our thoughts and feelings about being different this way – hard of hearing, deafened, or deaf.

We do deserve the resources to level the playing field. We deserve and must continue to ask for the quality captioning we need for all media online, on television, at the cinema, and in the theater.

We do deserve live event captioning also, for learning in school, for life-time learning in many places, and also online now (webinars and live events of all sorts online today). We need live captioning for face to face meetings in groups, conferences, and community events of all sorts.

The quote about a cage reminds us of another saying we find soothing at times =  “no good deed goes unpunished.”  The cage image is even more powerful. On top of being punished, a cage restricts, erases our freedom, and reduces our humanity to a basic animal level.

And then the double meaning – in a cage, or breaking out – it can be punishing – either one!

Breaking out is worth it. Finding ways with others to open new gates, explore new roads and groups, and also new technologies. We build resistance, we find allies, and we learn. There’s nothing wrong with aiming for new ideas about how to make yourself and the world better.

Wounds will heal, and inclusion happens, hopefully sooner than later, if we keep talking and also channel energies into actions. We don’t all agree on many things, including how to achieve the CCAC mission (inclusion of quality captioning universally), yet we need to connect in ways that make sense to both or all persons involved.

Carry on. Keep calm. Caption the World.

*Quote from Keira Knightly, actress, in The International Herald Tribune, October 23, 2015, page 9 under Culture.

Mega-Millions Excluded at Mandela Event – No Live Captioning

We hope to publish a few blogposts on this, yours invited, send them along! And for starters:

SL Users (sign language) rightly furious about gibberish language on global event to honor Mandela – with world leaders there.

Where was the live captioning for the event? 

All public events must have inclusion of quality live captioning!

Repeat – all public events must ensure quality live captioning – not only for mega-million of deaf who do not use SL, but for many millions of others too!

We other deaf, deafened, and people with hearing loss support and applaud inclusion of SL for public events, and the current global interest in SL. At the same time, who is making noise about exclusion of millions more due to lack of our language? Quality real time speech-to-text!

For all media coverage also – Captioning required for Television visuals and Internet videos.

 

Captioning Captures Communications!

Imagine going to school and being allowed to “hear” one word an hour.

Imagine working at a wonderful job and being allowed to “hear” one sentence a day.

Imagine how tiring, frustrating, and explosive denial of communication access is for mega-millions of citizens who have a hearing loss or deafness.

Advocate for inclusion! Join the CCAC now.

Ask for any captioning you need. Ask here:

http://CAPTIONMATCH.COM

It’s not going to happen immediately, but so important to take the first steps! Thanks if you do. We’re here to talk:

CCACaptioning@gmail.com

CCAC Invites Your Own Blogpost Re Captioning – To Spread the Words (Not for this CCAC Blog). A New CCAC CAP

NEW CCAC CAP!

IN our CCAC membership forum online, a most active community for captioning advocacy, we do not publish blog posts by members. They publish those themselves.

AND there are some members, and others, who publish great posts on their own blogs about captioning advocacy, captioning news. captioning services, and captioning products (we use the word captioning for all sorts of speech to text services and products, internationally).

SO – here’s an idea for a new CCAC CAP (captioning advocacy project) and to continue the collaborative culture of the CCAC as a “hub” to share information to push the CCAC agenda forward:

IF you publish a new blogpost about captioning, send the URL to CCAC Member Raj: bsr368@gmail.com
Please make a note of that email address

Raj will create a monthly list of the URL’s, and then the CAC will do some distribution of those posts, to all hundreds of CCAC members, on social media, and perhaps in the CCAC newsletters also.

Spread the news above! Let’s do this new sort of networking to work together in a new way. We all want inclusion of quality captioning (subtitling) in all the important places (the CCAC ten categories of life).

ls/ccac
If you are interested in joining the CCAC, we’ll welcome you. To share your blogposts re captioning, membership is not a requirement. Yet why not join and belong, it’s free. Go to the CCAC web, http://ccacaptioning.org and click on the join page.

Time to Fortify these Words: Captions & Captioning

Let’s start with the following letter (by another) which is confrontational, yet no less so than the perspective it critiques which was in the news nationally (again) a few days ago.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2011/04/17/deaf_culture_as_point_of_pride_its_more_a_curse/

Hear this: there is no one sort of “deafness” nor one sort of “deaf” person. Millions of us speak, do not use sign language, and do not want others to “speak for us” any longer.

History is complex and important here. Yet the future is equally if not more important for us.

We are diverse, we need many different resources because “communication” is like no other disability – it is an essential part of being, thinking, and relating to others.

Resources are diverse, and each one is valuable. Problem for us is that “captioning” is not yet respected and not included universally as it must be. Many other resources get more “hype” so we need to fortify the words “caption” and “captioning” – they are not yet powerful enough. 

The time is now to get this right for millions of citizens globally who are deaf, deafened or have a hearing loss.

Hope all this is clear?

Captioning (Subtitles) in the Theater in Madrid (Spain) – yes!

Nice to see this in Spain now! Photo is not clear, yet the article is! Congrats to all there.

Public release date: 28-Mar-2011
Contact: Ana Herrera
oic@uc3m.es
Carlos III University of Madrid

A new system for subtitles in the theater in Spain

This release is available in Spanish.

		IMAGE: This image of a play is to illustrate the new subtitled system in theater. Click here for more information.

The performance took place on March 15 at the María Guerrero Theatre in Madrid, where the play “Woyzeck,” by Georg Büchner could be enjoyed in the version by Juan Mayorga, under the direction of Gerardo Vera. This accessible staging has been promoted with the collaboration of the CESyA and the CDN, which for the first time ever in their theatres programmed a subtitled function for hearing impaired individuals, thanks to technological support from UC3M though a subtitling system, UC3MTitling..

This system carries out subtitling in the real time of events for an audience, without the need for highly qualified personnel. Its area of application is live events based on a pre-established script such as theatre, conferences, ceremonies, etc., which allow the synchronized broadcast of any accessibility element for a live event as it unfolds, and at a low cost. For that purpose, a technician is in charge of previously generating all of the accessibility elements (titles, sign language video and audio description) and afterwards synchronizing and carrying out their broadcast as the play is performed.

Advantages of the system

The main advantage of this system is that the technician can carry out the synchronization of the elements without actually having to be in the theatre where the performance is taking place, explained the UC3M Full Professor, Ángel García Crespo. “Thanks to communications tools for making Internet calls (VoIP), the performance can be followed anywhere,” the researcher noted, who also collaborated with CESyA.

In this way, once the technician begins broadcasting the accessibility elements, they can be broadcast in the theatre by different channels depending on their features: texts for titles, audio for audio description and video for sign language. In addition, because of the high degree of compatibility of the chosen formats, the play’s audience can simultaneously consult them from different devices: mobile phone, PC tablet, PDA, etc

UC3MTitling is a tool which incorporates the necessary procedures to control, on site or at distance, the synchronized projection of accessibility elements (subtitles, video for sign language and audio description) through the different channels associated with the theatre where the play takes place. “In a nutshell,” professor García Crespo concluded, “this subtitling system not only allows individuals with impaired hearing or sight to able to follow such events but the rest of the audience can also benefit from them, thereby achieving complete integration for disabled persons and conditions on par with the rest of the audience.”

This accessible function for persons with hearing impairments through subtitles has been the first in this framework of collaboration whose aim is to set up functions of this type on a regular basis during the 2011-2012 season of the of CDN programming. This agreement is within the framework of social awareness and action for accessible culture that the CESyA is carrying out, as it has done with other entities such as the Academia de Ciencias y Artes Cinematográficas (The Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Science) or different museum organizations.

(thanks to a facebook friend for sharing this with the ccac)

FACEBOOK HEAR THIS:DON’T LEAVE US OUT!

CAPTIONING ADVOCATES – YOUR MESSAGE TO FACEBOOK NOW IS NEEDED AND IMPORTANT – WILL YOU HELP?

LIVE STREAMS ON FB MUST HAVE QUALITY LIVE CAPTIONING – NOW!

TWEET: @fbaccess and @facebook

On your own FB page ab- go to settings, go down to bottom three ways to send them a message – Help, Support, and Report a Problem

Do you know more ways to contact FB? Tell us please.

If you don’t help with this, well, maybe you are part of the problem. We must ASK for equal communication access, all of us. Any questions?

Let us know your activity.

Providers reading? Keep in touch and let us know if you are doing LIVE STREAM CAPTIONING on social media or anyplace else on the Internet. We know you are. Please participate and help consumers advocate – your support is valuable for us, as always.

CCACAPTIONING@GMAILCOM

IF WE ALL DO THIS, OUR VOICES WILL BE HEARD.

LD

PLEASE TELL OTHERS TO HELP. YOUR LOCAL HEARING LOSS OR DEAF GROUP, YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

WE DON’T WANT TO WAIT ANY LONGER. YES, THEY CAN DO IT NOW. FACEBOOK, LIKE YOUTUBE/GOOGLE, SHOULD PUSH ALL LIVE STREAMERS TO INCLUDE SPEECH TO TEXT.

DON’T LEAVE US OUT! CAPTIONING IS OUR LANGUAGE TOO!