Closed Captioning Provides Major Breakthrough for Hard of Hearing

For over thirty years, our televisions have been a major part of our lives, bringing a literal world of news, information and entertainment into our homes, yet for millions of Americans this amazing source was just a silent movie. In 1985, 9 percent of the U.S. population, or 21.2 million individuals were hearing impaired and deaf, reported the National Center for Health Statistics. Because of closed captioning, those who have hearing loss are now able to enjoy a majority of popular prime time TV shows, as well as the presidential debates.

One organization is responsible for providing 90 percent of the closed captioning for the shows we see on TV, and it is a non-profit organization that has been around since 1979. They are also responsible for the subtitles that are available on VHS tapes. If you do a quick study and watch 6 stations for 18 hours, around 13% of the shows will have closed captions. In addition, at least one third of all the captioned programs available are for children.

The organization that provides the closed captioning also must convince the directors of the network to add captioning to their programs. Sadly, that's not such an easy job to do. The market that will become viewers as a result of closed captioning, is something that network producers, are only now beginning to understand. We discovered when we contacted them that they had been completely unaware of how the needs of hearing impaired, or the deaf, were being ignored.

With a closed caption viewership of about one million, a number of individuals have so far chosen not to provide captioning for their shows. The decoder is necessary to permit individuals to view the captions, and the above number is calculated based on 150,000 homes equipped with decoders. This number is likely to increase by 30,000 by the end of the year however.

It's like the old chicken and egg question - the more shows that allow closed captioning, the more viewers you'll have using closed captioning, and so the more shows the networks will decide to close caption. For a one hour progam, it costs between $1,500 and $2,200 to provide subtitles. Other variables that affect the total cost include how much time producers have to add the captions as well as the difficulty of the program's script.

When the program has been prerecorded, the caption has to be timed on when it should appear, as well as how long it should stay visible so the viewer can read it. Closed captioning is a quicker process when we are working with action movies. That means doing the subtitles for A Man For All Seasons will be totally different than for Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

While some of these programs receive their funding entirely from the Department of Education, some corporations, and the public broadcasting service, many others are being subsidized by various foundations or NCI. Most of the time the funds are split into three parts, with each organization paying their part to caption the program. There are a couple of reasons for the small size of the audience for closed captioning, one being public awareness and the other being the decoder itself. When decoders were first introduced in 1980, the average cost was around $280. You can purchase it today for between $200 and $250, with the average being $200.

Grants are searched out in order to provide low income families with decoders. We are currently running a campaign in several major American cities to provide decoders for as little as $35; we want TV manufacturers to see that there is a demand for decoders and that the technology need not be expensive so that one day they'll build TV's with built-in decoders, just like stereos are today.

Hearing impaired Americans are at a double disadvantage, not only because of their disability but because there are no obvious outward signs of the disability. According to recent data, the largest physically disabled group in the country are the hearing impaired, yet they seem invisible because for the most part they are easily isolated into their own world of deaf culture. Closed captioning can overcome those invisible barriers between those who hear and those who are impaired, and allow them to enjoy TV together, as so many families do.

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