Learning Center

Captioning Types, Methods, and Styles

The evolution of captioning techniques

Captioning Guidelines for the DCMP

These guidelines list DCMP captioning specifications and requirements.

Caption It Yourself: Basic Guidelines for Busy Teachers, Families, and Others Who Shoot Their Own Video

Captions (sometimes called “subtitles”) are the textual representation of a video's soundtrack. They are critical for viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, and they are also a great tool for improving the reading and listening skills of others. Unlike subtitles, captions provide information such as sound effects and speaker identification.

Digital Beginnings: Young Children's Use of Popular Culture, Media and New Technologies

This report presents the findings of a study that took place from September 2004 to July 2005. The study explored young children's (aged from birth to six) use of popular culture, media, and new technologies in the home through a survey of 1,852 parents and caretakers of children.

Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet 2008

Larry Goldberg, the Director of Media Access for WGBH in Boston, delivers a testimony to Congressional members of the ''Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2007'' subcommittee regarding the efforts undertaken by WGBH and NCAM to ensure accessibility in the digital age. Topics covered include the following: a brief history of captioning and audio description, some of the accessibility challenges faced by producers in moving their content to the Internet, the development and goals of the Internet Captioning Forum, and the need for standardization of captioning formats for the Web.

The CBC Captioning Style Guide, 2003

These guidelines pertain exclusively to off-line roll-up closed captioning, as distinct from other styles of off-line closed captioning. Written by the CBC, they are intended to supplement those guidelines set forth in "The CAC Captioning Style Guide: General Guidelines for Off line Pop On Captions," which should be taken as the authoritative reference in the event of any omission from the present document.

Implementing Closed Captioning for DTV

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules impose obligations on broadcasters for captioning of digital television (DTV) programs, but there has been some uncertainty over exactly what is required. This paper sets out the main requirements defined by the FCC rules, summarizes what broadcasters should be doing to meet those requirements, and provides guidance on implementing the various links in the chain from caption creation through to emission. A method for transport of DTV closed captions is described using data services in the vertical ancillary data space of serial digital video signals, and several methods for feeding caption data to the ATSC encoder are identified.

The Midas Touch of Accessibility (And How the DCMP is Still Making History)

The Language System of Audio Description: An Investigation as a Discursive Process

Philip J. Piety's study investigates the language used in a selection of films containing audio description and develops a set of definitions that allow productions containing it to be more fully defined, measured, and compared. It also highlights some challenging questions related to audio description as a discursive practice and provides a basis for future study of this unique use of language. From the Journal of Visual Impairments and Blindness (JVIB).

Audio Description Text for Indexing Films

Access to audiovisual materials should be as open and free as access to print-based materials. However, we have not yet achieved such a reality. Methods useful for organizing print-based materials do not necessarily work well when applied to audiovisual and multimedia materials. In this project, Canadian researchers James Turner and Suzanne Mathieu studied using audio description text and written descriptions to generate keywords for indexing moving images. In the second part of the study, they looked at the possibility of automatically translating keywords from audio description text into other languages to use them as indexing, with encouraging results.

Introducing Captioned Media In The Early Years

In the March 2008 issue of the Clarke School's "Mainstream News," Information Outreach Specialist Melissa Griswold makes the case for captions in the classroom. In encouraging teachers to adopt captioned media early and often in their students' academic careers, Melissa references the varied and proven literacy benefits of captioning, directs readers to programs such as the DCMP, and includes useful tips for teachers and parents. (Reprinted with permission.)

Microcomputer Activities of the Special Materials Project

This article was originally written by Leonard Novick in 1983, published in the September 1983 edition of the American Annals of the Deaf, and presented at the Nebraska (Lincoln) Symposium. Mr. Novick was then Director of the Special Materials Project (SMP), a contracted activity of the U.S. Department of Education with the Associations for Education of the Deaf. To support the task of the SMP to circulate Educational Captioned Films nationwide through 58 depositories, he describes two microcomputer-based systems to enhance the cost-effectiveness of the project. FILMSHARE, an inter-depository loan system, made it possible for depositories to draw on one another's film collections for bookings they would otherwise be unable to make. BICS made it possible for SMP to manage a floating inventory of educational captioned films in each region of the United States. Both activities were extremely innovative for their time.

Feasibility Study Relating To The Establishment Of A Descriptive Loan Service

Educational Captioning: Teachers Share Their Experiences

The following statements are teachers' testimonials of utilizing captioned educational media from the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP). Each teacher relates their experience using captioned media as a teaching tool in the classroom and why this accessible media is important in the education of students who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Educators Flocking to Finland, Land of Literate Children

Imagine an educational system where children do not start school until they are seven, where spending is a paltry $5,000 a year per student, where there are no gifted programs, and class sizes often approach 30. A prescription for failure, no doubt, in the eyes of many experts, but in this case, a description of Finnish schools that were ranked the world's best in 2003. Finland topped a respected international survey, coming in first in literacy and placing in the top five in math and science. How did Finland, which was hobbled by a deep recession in the 1990s, manage to outscore 31 other countries, including the United States? Read this article to learn the answer. One factor listed: "Children grow up watching television shows and movies (many in English) with subtitles. So they read while they watch TV." By Lizette Alvarez, April 9, 2004, The New York Times.