Caption Action 2: May 2012 Newsletter

This is the Caption Action 2 newsletter for May 2012.

In the last newsletter, we reported that we were going back to previously contacted web series producers to ask again, for captions. There have been a few successes.

Some producers have responded to say that they will caption, though they haven't started yet. One of them is the producer of travel web series: Others have said they will look into captioning or have requested information on how they can caption their web series.

Since the previous newsletter, these web series have begun captioning:

Diastrophe Films (Producer of How I Seize It) - Show is not safe for work. Also produces the web series Trailer Made. http://www.youtube.com/user/DisastropheFilms. So far, episode 58 of How I Seize It is available with closed captions.

The Dog Files - Thus far, episode 12 about pit bulls is available with captions. Producer has pledged to caption the rest. http://www.youtube.com/user/TheDogFiles

AllRecipes - the first cooking web series with closed captions! AllRecipes (http://www.youtube.com/user/allrecipes) began adding closed captioning to their cooking shows in late March and is continuing to add captioning. Since the channel has at least eight different shows, it is recommended to use the YouTube search engine to find the captioned ones. To do this, type in "allrecipes, cc" without the quote marks, in the YouTube search engine. This will bring up all captioned videos on YouTube that use the keyword phrase "allrecipes." So far it looks like four AllRecipes videos have closed captions:

How to Frost Cupcakes
How to Cook Asparagus
How to Make Gravy
How to Make Corned Beef and Cabbage

It has been frustrating trying to convince producers of web series to closed caption. Thus far, the success ratio looks like this: for every 50 web series producers contacted, one will agree to closed caption. That is a rather low success ratio, but we expect it will improve once the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act takes effect and awareness of the new law increases among producers.

Internet Captioning Legislation Update

The next few years should see a real increase in captioning online. Check out the National Association of the Deaf's clear summary of the Internet captioning deadlines: http://nad.org/news/2012/4/fcc-announces-internet-captioning-deadlines

More recently, the Department of Justice issued a 22-page statement regarding the Netflix captioning lawsuit. It can be downloaded at http://www.ada.gov/briefs/netflix_SOI.pdf. Bottom line: the DOJ considers Netflix a public accommodation subject to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act.