Broadcasters, movie studios, and pretty much everybody else have spent 30 years cooking up one excuse after another not to caption their programming. And it’s happening all over again online.
You can complain all you want, but does anything ever get better?
If you’ve ever had trouble just reading captions (especially on DVD), it’s probably not your fault. The fonts suck.
Time after time, deaf people – and other captioning viewers – settle for not enough captioning or lousy captioning. Or they file lawsuits and complaints against companies and, after all that trouble, they settle for exactly the same thing.
All sorts of shows that aren’t broadcast live use real-time captioning – because it’s cheaper. Or they use scrollup captioning on shows that shouldn’t use it, like dramas and comedies – because it’s cheaper.
The government regulators that are supposed to set the rules are good friends with the broadcasters who are supposed to follow those rules. In fact, they often go to work for each other.
This is the real reason why everything else we’ve mentioned here is happening. We want to write and test a set of standards for captioning (and more) – independently, honestly, and out in the open. We need your help.
