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

CAPTIONING ADVOCACY NEEDS YOU

Guess we’ve been very busy -long time since new blogpost – doing, among other things, Captioning Advocacy!

CCAC has strength in numbers – you are needed too. JOIN today. Why not? Email anytime if you have a question about being a member.

CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.COM

CCACAPTIONING.ORG IS THE WEBSITE

CCAC MISSION – INCLUSION OF QUALITY CAPTIONING UNIVERSALLY

p.s. we welcome guest blogposts about captioning!

CHANGING THOSE CAPTIONING OPTIONS!

EVERY DAY in every way we aim to find – have – enjoy – equal communication access and for many of us – millions – it’s quality captioning we can use. This post is about Media captioning online.

Breaking news is important for all of us to have access to. Videos and live broadcasts online must have quality captioning. The law (e.g. in the USA for TV also online) is that CC is required. Yet many times it takes a strong persistence to figure out how to turn it on (yes really, it’s not always a visible “cc” on the bottom of the screen) and then to adjust it.

Options to adjust it vary – font size, text color, background color, and more. Here’s my effort today to be able to read and use the online news as comfortably as people without hearing differences:

I opened MSNBC. Good news is that videos are all captioned (as required by law) yet at first CC was totally unreadable due to white text on transparent background that was placed right on top of the banner text along bottom of screen. Impossible.

With 4 clicks – yes four – I changed it to the following:
1. click on CC
2. my CC already ON – click on color of text
3. click on color of background
4. click on apply

In the CCAC Members’ Forum the other day we were talking about similar issues for YouTube videos, especially now with the new system YT/Google seems to be using. Check out the options everyone!

JOIN us in the CCAC – your membership is invited! Go to
http://ccacaptioning.org/join/

REGISTRATION OPEN! CAPTION STUDIES CON AUG 1-2 2016

THIS IS THE FIRST CONFERENCE OF IT’S KIND! YOU ARE INVITED TO REGISTER NOW AND SEND THIS MESSAGE TO ALL YOUR NETWORKS WHO MAY BE INTERESTED IN CAPTIONING TOO – YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE DEAF OR HARD OF HEARING TO LOVE AND USE CAPTIONING!

All information about the Con is here: CAPTIONSTUDIES.WOU.EDU
It’s Free, all Online, and Captioned too.
REGISTER NOW USING THIS LINK: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1wrt3nZWYz-U_d2Ti3_8DKzr54DTIPMYHiABPNUSzzag/viewform?c=0&w=1
CCAC is very proud to be one of the sponsors of this exciting event and in fact, we are jumping for joy – see you online Augusst 1 and 2. Let’s Talk Captioning!

CCAC IS PLACE 2 B 4 CAPTIONING ADVOCACY
CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.COM
CCACAPTIONING.ORG

Live, Online, Free, Captioned – from CCAC for YOU

Quick Reminder about two events we are happy to be part of. Did someone say “Internet and Society” today? We are society – with you. We use the Internet  – with you. CCAC mission is “inclusion of quality captioning universally.” .

MAY 18:

Webinar:  http://www.hearingloss.org/content/lets-captiontheworld

It’s in the evening EST yet we hope to see many of you with us. Time for questions will be there!

AUGUST 1 an 2:

Caption Studies Conference: http://captionstudies.wou.edu/ is a first! The webpages are all updated regularly. Check out the schedule and the presenters page. Be sure to register soon.

Step by step – CCAC advocates, educates, raises awareness, and keeps doing it. We invite you to join to add your support and energies. We’re all volunteers.

CCACATIONING.ORG

 

Where Are All the Politicians with Hearing Differences?

YOO HOO – WHERE ARE YOU?

Is hearing loss and deafness still too much stigma to show us your hearing aids, implants, lip-reading, or use of captioning? We need you – we millions of people with hearing differences globally. We’re not shy to talk about this in the CCAC!

Aiming to develop a list, here’s our start today. Please add your own information to this in comments or email to CCACaptioning@gmail.com

With more elected officials on any level with hearing differences, we can see some of our goals met, right? Yes.

HOW about you? Do you want to stand for election? Run for office? Do it! Let us know.

AND – WHO will be help develop this list and take it forward in good ways? For example, talk to these folks now listed to help us advocate for quality captioning in all places needed? to advise us about how to reach other politicians? etc. Volunteer or a small team needed please. You? Say yes – with an email to CCACaptioning@gmail.com now.

 

(Image is book cover by Philip Seib)

CCAC LIST:

CURRENT OFFICE HOLDERS – ANY COUNTRY, ANY LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT: 

HOH, deafened, oral deaf:
Mojo Mathers, New Zealand – lip reading and hopefully Captions
Pilar Lima, Spain – SLUser
someone in Estonia we’re told – name?
someone in UK who heads a parliamentary committee on deafness
Lady Hove, UK wears hearing aids (patron of hoh group)

Rand Paul, USA congress – hearing aids

SLUser
Adam Kosa ( Hungary)
Helga Stevens ( Belgium Flanders).

SLUsers use Captioning sometimes

 

FORMER HOH/deafened/deaf politicians:

Bill Clinton, USA, – hearing aids

Gary Malkowski, Canada (SLU?)

 

 

 

CCAC = CAPTIONING ACTIVISM + COMMUNITY

CCACAPTIONING.ORG
CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.COM
LET’S TALK CAPTIONING!

CAPTION STUDIES CONFERENCE! HEAR THIS!

IT’S HERE! DRUM ROLL! CCAC is very proud to announce the USA’s first CAPTIONING CONFERENCE! All invited to participate online this August 1-2. Stay tuned and see below as information from the source (WOU) spreads on conference webpage, in CCAC Members’ Forum, Social Media, and more. So exciting: http://captionstudies.wou.edu/

MORE:
Caption Studies 2016 Conference Announcement [ http://captionstudies.wou.edu/ ]

The first annual Caption Studies conference in the United States takes place August 1st and 2nd of 2016. Hosted by Western Oregon University, the first conference will feature two days worth of speakers and panels presenting on an array of different caption-related topics—from closed-captioning to captioning research to CART to a caption user focus group. The three strands emphasized at the conference are advocacy, practice, and academic/research. There are presentations from group of stakeholders.

A free virtual conference, i.e. all panels and presentations will be streamed to the web and shown to anyone interested, the conference strives to model best practices for accessible conferences and accessible content online. All videos will be captioned, and all live events will have live, real-time CART captioning.

The conference keynote is Dr. Sean Zdenek, long-time closed caption and accessibility researcher from Texas Tech University. Zdenek’s book, Reading Sounds, was recently released to much support and acclaim.

For more information go to: captionstudies.wou.edu. [http://captionstudies.wou.edu/] captionstudies.com and captionstudiesconference.com both redirect to this same URL.

You can find us at Twitter as @captionstudies. [https://twitter.com/captionstudies]
We plan to use the hashtag: #caption16
The conference Facebook page is here: [https://www.facebook.com/captionstudies/?ref=bookmarks]

If you would like semi-regular announcements regarding the Caption Studies conference, such as when conference registration is open, if and when different speakers or presenters have confirmed, or when more information about 2017 becomes available, watch our Twitter feed. You can also sign up for email notifications here: http://eepurl.com/bWCP0v. All emails on this list will only be used for conference related announcements.

This conference is generously supported by Western Oregon University’s College of Education, Strada Communications, 3 Play Media, and the CCAC.

CaptionStudies17 is tentatively planned to take place face-to-face at Western Oregon University in late July or early August 2017. If you are interested in potentially presenting or sponsoring some part of the conference, please be in touch.

WHAT DO WE DO IN THE CCAC? WE ADVOCATE, EDUCATE, RAISE AWARENESS, PARTICIPATE, COMMUNICATE, COLLABORATE AND INSPIRE! #CAPTIONWORLDNOW

ccacaptioning@gmail.com

When will Facebook show CC for all videos?

Some videos, with Open Captions (OC) give us access to videos on Facebook. Others, don’t seem to have any captioning at all. Boo!

How many of you have tried to contact FB about this?

What more can we all do to find full equal communication access on social media that most of us use every day (too much – smile)?

Please volunteer soon!

CCACAPTIONING.ORG

CCACAPTIONING@GMAIL.COM

CCAC = CAPTIONING ACTIVISM + COMMUNITY

JOIN TODAY.

 

Make Noise: Your Voice and Vote Counts!

NEWEST article asking for your voices to talk to candidates this important election year:

http://hearinghealthmatters.org/hearingviews/2016/captions-will-capture-the-votes-by-lauren-storck/

If not you, who? Access to communications with quality captioning is our right, and the right thing to do.

How can CCAC help you get started? Please read the article and let’s talk.

CCACaptioning.org

CCACaptioning@gmail.com

CCAC Talks To YouTube/Google About Quality CC

(See Follow Up Blogpost on December 13)

CCAC Members and Friends,

Here’s a letter that two of our volunteers sent to YouTube/Google last week. It’s one part of CCAC continuing MEDIA captioning advocacy. YT/Google acknowledged it today, saying it was sent to the team…

We wrote to them again due to their newly-launched “community” (crowd) captioning feature. It looks awkward and not coordinated with what may be easier and faster quality captioning systems they already have in place for videos.

The goal is that all video content (huge, as you know, on YT) and everyplace online has quality captioning, when published. Access and inclusion with equal communication access, from day one, we believe that is a fundamental human right for mega-millions globally.

==

Letter:

Hello …

To follow up on an earlier question (see below), …(we have) have put down some thoughts for you and Google/YouTube to consider.

Captioning is our language – and the world’s language too.

Regarding the newest captioning feature from YouTube – fan-based community captioning – we offer the following suggestions we hope will be useful.

Issue 1: Enable these features by default

Content owners have to manually navigate through a number of layers to their community settings and turn this feature on.

CCAC suggests that this should be always ON by default and that you enable the channel owners to turn it off instead.

Issue 2: Starting from scratch

YouTube expects fans to transcribe the whole thing from scratch / ground zero.

Since many content creators already have a transcript in some shape or form – such as a script or production running sheet etc, a more efficient workflow is to source an accurate transcript first and then use Google’s voice recognition technology to auto-sync it into a caption file.

But as far as the CCAC can see, there’s no way for fans to upload an accurate transcript in this manner (or a finished caption / subtitle file).

Issue 3: There’s very little scope for collaboration

Fans are expected to work in independent silos and there doesn’t seem to be any ways to work together with other fans.

For longer videos, it would be far more efficient if there was ways to break them down into smaller, more manageable chunks that could be performed by different fans simultaneously.

Issue 4: There appears to be no way to fix the automatic machine generated cc.

CCAC suggests that for videos of shorter duration and with good quality audio, editing to correct the machine cc is a good way to create good quality captions.

Our group would like to help in any way we can to beta test this, support your efforts, and we welcome your interest and support for the CCAC.

Let’s talk further.

Lauren and Michael

http://CCACAPTIONING.ORG We Ask for Quality Captioning Universally. #CaptiontheWorld. Volunteer captioning advocates internationally, official 501(c)3 non-profit, join us.

==

Special thanks to CCAC member Michael Lockrey for his dedication to quality captioning issues, and all the volunteer time he donates to CCAC and others.

Readers here – we agree with their first reply to us, i.e. that video content owners, ideally, need to see and approve the CC before publication, yet this may take months or never happen unless Google/YT leads the way and pushes it ON by default – do it or the video will not be published. To use quality CC, any content provider can find low cost or free systems on the YT pages – it’s the right thing to do. Without quality CC, we have ramps for communications that are full of dangerous gaps.