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
San Jose Mercury
http://www.mercurynews.com/google/ci_14514072?source=email&nclick_check=1
Wall Street Journal
SignCasts
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.
- Thanks to GV
New FCC Fact Sheets on Closed Captioning
The closed captioning complaint rules have changed and are effective immediately. Consumers may now file their written captioning complaints directly with the FCC.
In addition, video programming distributors are required to submit their contact information for the handling of immediate closed captioning concerns and written complaints to the FCC by March 22, 2010, for posting on the FCC’s website. Once the database of information is ready, the Commission will issue a Public Notice informing consumers about the availability of the information and instructing them on how to search and find their distributor’s contact information.
To read the revised closed captioning Fact Sheets, please see:
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/closedcaption.html
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/dtvcaptions.html
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/CC_converters.html
To see the Commission’s website on closed captioning, please visit:
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/caption.htm
- Thanks to NVRC, Fairfax
The future will be captioned: improving accessibility on YouTube
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 3:18 PM ET
Posted by Hiroto Tokusei, Product Manager
(cross-posted from the Official YouTube Blog)
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/future-will-be-captioned-improving.html
Tens of millions of people in the U.S. experience some kind of hearing impairment and recent studies have predicted that over 700 million people worldwide will suffer from hearing impairment by 2015. To address a clear need, the broadcast industry began running captions on regular video programming in the early 1970s. Today, closed captions on video are more prevalent than ever. But generating captions today can be a time-consuming and complicated process.
Making video easily accessible is something we’re working hard to address at YouTube. One of the first steps we took was the development of a caption feature in 2008. In November of last year we released auto-captioning for a small, select group of partners. Auto-captioning combines some of the speech-to-text algorithms found in Google’s Voice Search to automatically generate video captions when requested by a viewer. The video owner can also download the auto-generated captions, improve them, and upload the new version. Viewers can even choose an option to translate those captions into any one of 50 different languages — all in just a couple of clicks.
Today, we are opening up auto-captions to all YouTube users. There will even be a “request processing” button for un-captioned videos that any video owner can click on if they want to speed up the availability of auto-captions. It will take some time to process all the available video, so here are some things to keep in mind:
- While we plan to broaden the feature to include more languages in the months to come, currently, auto-captioning is only for videos where English is spoken.
- Just like any speech recognition application, auto-captions require a clearly spoken audio track. Videos with background noise or a muffled voice can’t be auto-captioned. President Obama’s speech on the recent Chilean Earthquake is a good example of the kind of audio that works for auto-captions.
- Auto-captions aren’t perfect and just like any other transcription, the owner of the video needs to check to make sure they’re accurate. In other cases, the audio file may not be good enough to generate auto-captions. But please be patient — our speech recognition technology gets better every day.
- Auto-captions should be available to everyone who’s interested in using them. We’re also working to provide auto-captions for all past user uploads that fit the above mentioned requirements. If you’re having trouble enabling them for your video, please visit our Help Center: this article is for uploaders and this article is for viewers.
For content owners, the power of auto-captioning is significant. With just a few quick clicks your videos can be accessed by a whole new global audience. And captions can make is easier for users to discover content on YouTube.
Twenty hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Making some of these videos more accessible to people who have hearing disabilities or who speak different languages, not only represents a significant advancement in the democratization of information, it can also help foster greater collaboration and understanding.
- Thanks to NVRC, Fairfax
FCC Announces New Closed Captioning Complaint Procedure
TDI eNotes – February 26, 2010
In this issue:
- FCC ANNOUNCES NEW CLOSED CAPTIONING COMPLAINT PROCEDURE
FCC Announces New Closed Captioning
Complaint Procedure
TDI Editor’s Note:
This action by the FCC is in response to part of TDI’s Petition for Rulemaking regarding captioning quality standards filed on July 23, 2004. The new procedure was first announced by the FCC on November 7, 2008 pending review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which became effective as of February 19, 2010. Thanks to the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and Northern Virginia Resource Center (NVRC) for their part in sending out this announcement.
Consumers can now file complaints directly with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), thanks to new closed captioning complaint rules by the FCC effective February 19, 2010. These new closed captioning rules, requested by TDI and other consumer groups in 2004, make it easier for consumers to report closed caption problems. When you see a television program that has no captions, missing captions, delayed captions, captions that are garbled, displayed too fast, or unreadable, please file a complaint with the FCC.
Filing Closed Captioning Complaints
Closed captioning complaints must be filed within 60 days of the captioning problem.
File your complaint with the FCC. The FCC will send your complaint to your video programming distributor (the TV station or your cable or satellite TV service). The distributor must respond to your complaint within 30 days.
Online
You can file your complaint by using the FCC’s online Disability Access Complaint Form #2000C at https://esupport.fcc.gov/sform2000/formC!input.action?form_page=2000C
**TDI Editor’s Note:
Disability Access Complaint Form 2000C on the FCC’s website erroneously states that if your complaint is about closed captioning, you must first contact the station or video programming distributor. Cheryl Heppner at NVRC corresponded with the staff at the Disability Rights Office in the FCC who assured us that, in accordance with the new rules, the FCC will accept this web form without your first trying to contact the video programming distributor. The form will be changed shortly, but in the meantime, contacting the station is not required.
File your complaint by email to fccinfo@fcc.gov
Fax
Fax your written complaint to 1-866-418-0232
Letter
Mail your complaint letter to:
Federal Communications Commission
Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau
Consumer Complaints
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, D.C. 20554
For more information:
Click here at http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm?sid=&id=d1e3 for more information about filing complaints, or call the FCC for assistance, Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (eastern time), at 1-888-225-5322 or 1-888-835-5322 TTY.
See the Closed Captioning Factsheet for more information about closed captioning athttp://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/closedcaption.html.
OR
You may file your complaint with the video programming distributor (the TV station or your cable or satellite TV service). The distributor must respond to your complaint within 30 days. If the distributor cannot solve the problem, or you are not satisfied with the response you receive (or if you receive no response), you can send your complaint to the FCC.
New Contact Information Requirements
The FCC also adopted new rules requiring video programming distributors to make their contact information available to consumers. Specifically, video programming distributors are required to make two kinds of contact information available:
- Contact information for the receipt and handling of immediate closed captioning concerns by consumers, such as when captions suddenly disappear or become garbled while watching a program.
- Contact information for written closed captioning complaints.
This contact information must be provided:
- on the video programming distributor’s website
- in billing statements (when billing statements are issued), and
- when extended listings are published in telephone directories.
Video programming distributors must provide this contact information to the FCC by March 22, 2010. The FCC will publish a Public Notice when this contact information is available in a searchable database on the FCC website. This contact information will also be available by calling the FCC call the FCC for assistance, Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (eastern time), at 1-888-225-5322 or 1-888-835-5322 TTY.
Mobile Local Digital TV is Here. Captioned?
By Jamie Berke, Monday February 15, 2010
NVRC Note: Jamie’s wonderful blog on About.com got a scoop on whether we locals will be able to watch TV shows on our wireless devices soon. She recalled that last fall it was reported that the new mobile digital television standard was intended to carry digital TV broadcasts with closed captioning and wrote:
“The New York Times reports that starting in April, local TV stations in metro Washington, DC will begin free mobile digital TV broadcasts. (Other metropolitan areas will also get mobile digital TV) The mobile television standard useddoes support closed captioning. However, that is a standard; it does not guarantee that the broadcasts themselves will be captioned. Again, it is up to the content provider – and the device makers. Need another reason to support HR 3101?
I can already see myself on the Metrorail system two months from now, glaring in envy at my fellow passengers as they watch television on their handhelds. Then again, maybe not. I’m going to place a few phone calls to find out if local stations will include captions in their mobile digital TV broadcasts.”
Now click on one of these links to her website and see the exciting reply from Jay Adrick, VP of Broadcast Technology at Harris Communication:
http://bit.ly/ctGHqp
http://deafness.about.com/b/2010/02/15/mobile-local-digital-tv-is-here-captioned.htm
- Thanks to NVRC, Fairfax
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