Subscribe to this CCAC Blog for Captioning Advocacy!

We hope everyone knows how to SUBSCRIBE to this blog – more important than ever before as the CCAC approaches the end of two years of wonderful activity across many online media.  If you don’t know a lot about the CCAC yet, it’s time to subscribe now and enjoy captioning advocacy ideas, information, and action with us!

CCAC has over 400 members and about 2000 on three social media. Folks are eager for more inclusion of quality captioning universally (the CCAC mission).

To subscribe now, go down along the left side of the page here to find where it says “Email Subscription” – click on that and you are subscribed. You will get an email (sent to whatever email identity you use when you subscribe). If you use more than one email address routinely, subscribe for all of them, fine with us :-).

Also, COMMENTS to all future postings are very important. Please take a minute or two to tel us if you like the blog news, and/or your questions, comments and suggestions. (Polite language is required!)

The CCAC is a membership community (you can join us also, please do, not in the blog here, yet very easy to do by going to our website and clicking on the “join” link there – go to http://www.ccacaptioning.org).  CCAC has free membership for individuals and groups. As a CCAC member, you will receive news and information about captioning and captioning advocacy via emails during the year, and advance notice about other CCAC events and activities. Membership also means that you are eligible to request a free hour of captioning or CART service from a CCAC provider member (if it fits for both, with timely planning). 

SUBSCRIBE now – enjoy the Blog, tell us about your captioning advocacy, small or larger, all sorts, and submit a guest blog to us anytime via email to ccacaptioning@gmail.com

Thanks!

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Read CCAC on Facebook!

Our CCAC facebook page has over 1000 friends now, and we post lots of news items there about captioning, subtitling, CART, and related.

It’s a good place to comment also.

In fact, we wonder if we need anything else? Hmm…

CCAC is a membership group also – we have a private CCAC members’ only forum online – to develop the CCAC itself as a grass-roots advocacy working community. In the members’ forum, we discuss CCAC caps – captioning advocacy projects – lots of them.

The CCAC WEBSITE publishes a lot of good articles and resources also, http://www.ccacaptioning.org

Captioning by Google

Improved automatic cc from Google/YouTube? Here’s an article from June:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=google-youtube-auto-caption

We also saw a comment the other day about google “improved” automatic
captioning…and am wondering if anyone can tell us if there is any
evidence that is has improved over the past six months? one year? The
early automatic cc was unreliable (poor) overall,  so we’ve not tried opening
it over the past few months; yet as always, we look forward to
improvements.

For example, if the system approaches quality
(professional quality, 98% accuracy), then it might one day be used — drum roll
here — in “real life” – on our mobiles with all those folks whom we
cannot understand in person – with good audio, for all voices, good
acoustics, etc.! That’ll be the day 🙂
—
www.ccacaptioning.org; ccacblog.wordpress.com;
http://www.youtube.com/user/ccacaptioning;
CCAC is the place to be for captioning advocacy.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does” Margaret
Mead

Emergency Test – Nationwide – Wednesday 9 November – and Captioning Matters

CCAC has distributed several reminders in recent days to all CCAC members,, friends, and followers (on social media) about this first test of the nationwide EAS – Emergency Alert System. It’s to be only 30 seconds long, Wednesday, 9 November, at 4:30 Eastern time. It’s only a test, no action to take.

However…

There seems to be a lot of last-minute “news” about about the fact that captioning (text) may not come through on many television stations during the alert, to say, e.g. “this is only a test.”  While efforts are being made to inform all in advance, while many groups are trying to reach out to as many “deaf” people as possible to tell them the EAS may in fact be inaccessible to them (only for some, as far as we can learn, e.g. inaccessible only on some cable transmissions, or some older televisions) – we wonder about the following:

It’s on radio also – no captioning there

The communications going out today seem to focus on “don’t worry, it’s only a test.” Yet for many of us, it’s already, in one important ingredient, a “fail” for the first nationwide test. (Or is all this advance warning about lack of captioning going to be a non-problem?)

You are needed! Tune in on Wednesday and let the FCC know what you saw or did not see, in terms of text during the alert.

On one hand, it’s very important to let folks know that the system is not fully functional (accessible). On the other hand, one also wonders why a first test (reduced from 3 minutes to 30 seconds the other day) could not be planned and carried out so that it is truly accessible for all.

Additionally, it’s not to be on the Internet (as far as we can tell so far). The internet is where many get our daily news, either on websites, the social media now, or emails. Some of us are quite “tuned in” all the time to text online (it’s our language). We can read text online quite well. (And we do not know if the Internet would be working in any real national emergency – another matter to be explored).

Meanwhile, while this is only a “test” – it’s important, please try to tune in where you can, and the main message today, prior to the test,  is perhaps this: we already know it may not be accessible to all. If you have a deaf friend, neighbor, or co-worker, check to advise him or her that it’s “only a test.”

When captioning goes wrong…

Good news from Australia – for one television channel who “heard” the need. From the article: “In reaction to a series of non-compliance with captioning regulations the station has set up a “visual’ captioning alert internally in its presentation centre to highlight any programs going to air without captions. In addition, the station is asking caption viewers to alert it to any problems via the social networking service, Twitter.”

Read more here: http://ht.ly/7fXW3

 

See also: https://sites.google.com/site/ccacgroup/articles-resources/things-to-know-about-broadcast-captioning