An estimated 36 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss. In 1990 a law was passed requiring all televisions to support closed captioning and in 1996 another law was passed requiring most TV shows to offer closed captions. Now a bill is before Congress that would require any web video…that also appears on TV…to offer closed captions as well.
While this law, if passed, will only affect the large television and cable networks offering duplicate TV content on the web, it brings about the question of what smaller web video publishers should do. I’ve personally been asked more than once if I can provide closed captions on my videos.
The problems with closed captions for smaller web video producers are cost…and to a lesser degree, technology. To create closed captions, first the video must be transcribed into the written word. Next, that text must be time coded, meaning you have to create a file that says “between the 5 and 8 second marks of the video, display these words”. And finally, that file must must be linked to both the video and video player being used (the video player actually controls the closed captions).
Since April, YouTube has automatically been adding closed caption options to any videos uploaded (English only). But rather than relying on human transcription, they use the same voice-recognition software used for Google Voice. While certainly better than nothing, the results are often spotty:
On the human side of things, basic transcription services average around $1.50 per minute of transcribed audio. Or every hour of video transcribed is going to cost around $90. And that doesn’t include time coding the transcription, which can easily quadrupole the cost (or more). Then you need a Flash video player that supports closed captioning or subtitles (and most don’t). To the best of my knowledge, HTML5 video does not support closed captioning whatsoever…though it could be done through custom coding.
So those are the challenges facing smaller web video producers. And you might think “that’s too much to bother with”. But there is another advantage for close captioning videos. And that is search. By having a “text” version of your video, your video instantly become far easier to index in the search engines (or within your own site). For example, you could offer a site search that returns the exact point in a video where a user’s search terms appear.
But again, it does take an investment in time, money and technology to get there. However, it’s an investment that depending on your market, could pay off in multiple ways.
Well its about time! It sucks because internet streaming seems to be the Now and Future, they are also considering releasing theater movies straight to your home via Sattelite and the newer cable boxes….And I being severely hearing impaired just cannot enjoy a good movie without captions and subtitles. Which isn’t fair. I will not give amazon video or Netflix my money until they also cater to the hearing impaired. As far as the technology goes, I saw a website that let users upload their own subtitle files for any video and give you the option to turn them on or off. There are websites and people dedicated to transcribing and synching subtitles and they do it for free! I hope this becomes law because I’m tired of being left out.
Hi Juan Frausto,
Interesting topic. Would you share information about these websites you talk about?
Thanks in advance.
Well the website allowing you to upload subs straight to the video was crunchyroll.com but they changed everything completely now. The websites to find subtitles to TV shows and movies, while for illegal files it shows there are people out there synching and subbing. A few sites are addic7ed.com subscene.com and opensubtitles.org
Juan as much as I would like you to be able to enjoy a movie that caters for your impairment, I would resist as much as I possibly could the need to implement a LAW to control us all even further. We are a controlled society as it is, let the free market dictate customer services.
As you pointed out there are people doing it for free, why not put you entrepreneurial hat on on, and instead of of complaining “I am tired of being left out” do something about it, not just get big brother to hit everybody over the head with a big stick