After a good discussion concerning new media (iTunes, Quicktime, etc…) and closed captioning, I sent an email to NAD to see where we are with getting support to get FCC to enforce new captioning laws.
Here is the response from Rosaline (Director, Law and Advocacy Center at NAD):
—- begin letter —-
The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) has been advocating for accessible (captioned) Internet audiovisual material for years. We are also aware of the proliferation of new technologies and devices that are not accessible. As you know, telecommunications and information technologies are becoming more versatile and innovative. These technologies offer new opportunities for greater independence, education, and employment, but only if they are designed to be accessible. People with disabilities and people who are deaf or hard of hearing should not be left behind.
Unfortunately, accessibility features for equipment and content are not being provided voluntarily or routinely. We have, therefore, decided that new legislation must be introduced to bring existing laws, such as the Communications Act and Television Decoder Circuitry Act, into the 21st century and ensure access to evolvoing technologies. To accomplish that
goal, we have joined forces with other consumer and service organizations to form the new Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (see www.COATaccess.org). In April, the NAD hosted the first meeting of the new Coalition. The following are some of the things the Coalition is seeking:
We will need a lot of help from thousands of people like you to get Congress to pass a new law. Our first step is to get consumer organizations (local, state, regional, or national) signed up as affiliates of the new Coalition. This will help us get the word out when we are ready for consumers to take action (like sending us personal stories about access barriers, writing to their Senators and Representatives in Washington, etc.).
Please tell people about the new Coalition. Check out our website (www.COATaccess.org). Read our information (“white papers”). Give us your feedback.
I hope this information is helpful and answers your questions. If I missed something, let me know.
Rosaline
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Jun 11, 2007Interesting tidbit:
http://coataccess.civicspaceondemand.org/node/22
Captioning of web-based videos is both technically and economically feasible. Apple’s QuickTime 1.0 has provided computer-based digital video platforms capable of supporting text formats for closed captions since 1991. Subsequent similar developments by Microsoft (Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange for Windows Media Player )[4] and RealNetworks (which bases its RealText on the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language )[5] and Adobe (CC for Flash) have also made the provision of textual representations of a web-based video’s audio track a technically achievable task. For those web-based video providers who desire a single, universal text file format, an industry group called the “Timed Text Working Group,” established in 2003, developed the Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP).[6] Now under consideration to become an industry-wide standard, this would allow for consistency across various authoring systems and platforms, and would provide a common data format for content providers to use in providing captions, much like line 21 (CEA-608) is the format used for analog transmissions and DTVCC (CEA-708) specifications are used for digital TV. In addition, there are a number of other tools that content providers and distributors can use to convert their traditional television captions into captions for web-based video. Examples include “CaptionKeeper,”[7] Captionate,” [8] “MAGpie,” [9] “CC for Flash,”[10] and the professional-grade, most commonly used software in the U.S. captioning industry, Softel Swift.
Jun 11, 2007Thank you for sharing the information and my organization, Mass. State Association of the Deaf, will most definitely join the organization to push for Internet CC and other forms of accessibility.
Jun 14, 2007Since iTune provides these movies and musics with lack of opened or closed captioning. I would like to see these rental or purchased movies and musics including it as soon as possible. I hope that these things, as I mentioned about them, are defined in FCC law which will have a strong enough to enforce the companies to provide it to us, Deaf viewers!
Jun 15, 2007I have download movies and music. There is no CC period. Grrrr.. We have to get act against apple to wake up to provide CC for us.
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5:43 pm
Yea, We need to push FCC to required any internet to provide CC and others.. Lets support this!