HDTV Almanac - Closed-Captions Coming to the Internet

[alfredpoor]

With all the interest and excitement about streaming video over the Internet, one detail is often overlooked. Some individuals with disabilities — particularly those with limited hearing – are closed out from this video content because it does not include closed captioning. Broadcast television provides it and most movie DVDs offer English sub-titles, but not [...]

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[ccclvib]

Since my wife has a problem with hearing, we're particularly attuned to this issue. What we've found, as well, is Netflix - at least on some movies - does have a captions option. It works at least as well as captioning on broadcast TV, but not as well as DVD - for obvious reasons. I imagine at least part of the reason for captions being added is the age of the movie (it would have to be new enough for captions to have been added to the DVD in the first place - or in the case of lots of the movies Netflix streams would have had to have been captioned when Starz aired it.)

I suspect there will be some form of limiting for older, less popular movies when it comes to determining how soon that movie has to include captions, otherwise, the streaming services will fight something that requires all streaming content to include captions - strenuously!