Deaf Youth from the California School for the Deaf and the YouTube Captioning

For years, the Deaf Community has been seeking greater access to videos shown on the internet. YouTube has developed a new technology that allows videos with sound to be automatically captioned. For the first time in the history of technology, it is as easy as pressing a button on the YouTube program to receive captions.

Instructional television teacher from the California School for the Deaf, Joey Baer, and his high school students Angel Harrington, Myra Rubio, and Rachelle Richardson participated in YouTube’s press conference on Thursday, March 4, to formally announce access to YouTube through captioning.

As a result of their participation and the national press coverage it received, CSD’s own student-produced news on YouTube, “Talon News,” has had an exponential increase in its viewer count from 300 hits to over 14,000 hits within one day.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXZdhMyPHsQ

The national press coverage about the deaf youth from California School for the Deaf appears on the following websites:

Tech Crunch

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/youtube-launches-auto-captions-for-all-videos/

BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8550830.stm

Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030403148.html?referrer=emailarticle

San Jose Mercury

http://www.mercurynews.com/google/ci_14514072?source=email&nclick_check=1

Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704187204575101852850074026.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth

Mashable

http://mashable.com/2010/03/04/youtube-auto-captioning/

Newser

http://www.newser.com/story/82493/youtube-adds-captions-for-deaf.html

SEEKING EQUAL ACCESS

For further information on the issue of accessibility, see http://www.nad.org/issues/technology/internet-access-and-broadband.

www.csdeagles.com

- Thanks to GV