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Thread: Argument against open captioning

Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)

From: Scott Standifer
Date: Mon, Aug 27 2001 10:15AM
Subject: Argument against open captioning
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Hi Johanna,
I have wondered about open captioning occasionally, too. And your
points about its usefulness beyond people with hearing impairments are
well taken. In actual practice, however, I find that open captioning can
be quite distracting when you _don't_ need it.
The main point of using video (I think) is to give other people a sense
"place" and a feel for the scene. When I was working as a video
producer, I always advised clients to think in those terms when deciding
if video was appropriate for their project. When captions are on the
screen I always find myself automatically reading them, tracking how
well they match the spoken dialogue, etc. This makes it harder (for me,
at least) to "see" the image, since I am looking mostly at and thinking
about the text. It takes a conscious effort to not be distracted this
way. Since the image should be an important part of why you are using
video in the first place and since it is so much work to put video
together well, you want to maximize viewer attention to it.
I think it depends on your audience and how many you think will want
captioning. But unless you think that a majority of your audience needs
the captioning, I would opt for closed captioning rather than open.
Just my thoughts on the matter,
Scott Standifer, Ph.D..
Region 7 Rehabilitation Continuing Education Program
(RCEP7)
University of Missouri, Columbia
>
> Date: 25 Aug 2001 11:37:52 -0600
> From: Johanna Frohm < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> Subject: Using closed captioning versus open captioning
>
> I noted the questions regarding how to display the captioning in the
> SMIL file in RealPlayer. I am wondering about the merits of using open
> captioning in a SMIL file versus using closed captioning. Closed
> captioning will display if the accessibility feature is enabled in
> RealPlayer Preferences. If open captioning is used, it will be visible
> to everyone without any additional steps. It benefits the person with
> the hearing impairment, but it may also benefit others, such as the
> person working at a workstation with their speakers turned off, the
> person working at a computer without speakers, or a person working in a
> noisy environment. There are probably other reasons open captioning can
> be useful, but are their reasons for not using it?
>
> Thanks,
> Johanna

From: Holly Marie
Date: Mon, Aug 27 2001 1:24PM
Subject: Re: Argument against open captioning
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Standifer"
> In actual practice, however, I find that open captioning can
> be quite distracting when you _don't_ need it.
there are many other distractions that are much worse or more
offending...than captioning might be(pop up ads, blinking marketing
banners, ads that look like computer GUI boxes with click here etc). so
if someone does not want open captioning they can set their applicaiton
to default off, unless they change it.
or the tool people making these media players, could have an easy toggle
off and on feature on the control panel with that widely known closed
captioning icon? that may be a good solution for all?
so the set up of on or off is right there and handier.
> I think it depends on your audience and how many you think will want
> captioning. But unless you think that a majority of your audience
needs
> the captioning, I would opt for closed captioning rather than open.
Well, that certainly is a good argument from your standpoint, and find
myself agreeing with that.
And wonder how we can apply this to marketing tactics, pop up windows
and ads out there?
Would be very nice to be able to squelch those items and interferences.
It is getting so that we cannot fully close a browser without those
hidden pop under ads popping back in our way.
holly

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Tue, Aug 28 2001 5:39AM
Subject: Re: Argument against open captioning
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One of the comments in this thread reminds me of some questions I find myself struggling with as I work with our developers.
This is a liberal paraphrase sprinkled with similar comments I have read other places. -- The user with a disability should be expected to know how to use the accessibility features of his/her browser, plug-ins, and/or assistive technologies.  
I find myself asking questions like...should the person be expected to know all the accessibility features available?  If not all, which ones?  Should there even be an expectation?  
On the one hand, if I can establish a minimal set of skills/knowledge to be expected of the user, I can more precisely define the minimal requirements for making a site accessible.  In fact, it would make site design and testing easier to accomplish.
On the other hand, I am wary of setting those expectations since they are likely to be based on my own bias as to what the user should know, not what users are likely to know.  The fact is for those people who do not meet those skill/knowledge levels, the site designed will be inaccessible.  
Relating this back to the subject heading, my feeling is that there may be many people who are deaf or hard of hearing that are completely unaware of the option which will turn captioning on or off.  If I were training these people how to access the internet, I would expect them to learn how to use this feature.  As a designer, I am hesitant about making that an expectation of my design.  
Tim

Tim Harshbarger

Disability Support 

State Farm Insurance Companies

Email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = 

Phone  309-766-0154

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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Tue, Aug 28 2001 9:01AM
Subject: Re: Argument against open captioning
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The fact that there are many potentially distracting elements that may
appear on or at the same time as a web page does not diminish the legitimacy
of a person's belief that any one of the (captions) is distracting.
Fortunately, with captions, I believe that there is no reason (from the
user's perspective) that captions should necessarily be open, but I agree
that it is important to include instructions for viewing captions.
For clarification, if captions are able to be turned on and off, they are
closed captions, regardless of the state of display when the clip starts.
Open captions are always on.
So, the questions are:
1) Should I provide open or closed captions?
2) Should I choose closed captions, should they be on or off by default?
1) An advantage of open captions is that the author/producer has better
control over the appearance of the captions. If you require captions that
are 14pt Green Comic Sans font, you can only ensure that users will see that
by controlling their machines and the fonts installed therein, or by burning
the captions the way you want into the video presentation itself.
The downside of this is that burned-in captions can't be turned off, and
some people may complain that they are distracting. You could, then,
provide two separate versions of the video, captioned and not. A
disadvantage of burned-in captions is that if you resize the video in the
player, any loss in quality that the video suffers will be suffered by the
captions as well. Similarly, if the captions are added before the video is
compressed, any loss in quality in the video will be shared by the captions.
Take a look at some Webcasts with captions and see if the quality is
satisfactory. You can check out closed captions at the rich media
accessibility resource center
(http://ncam.wgbh.org/richmedia/showcase.html). Try resizing one of the
videos to see how the captions do not distort.
2) If you have closed captions, I think that what is important is for the
user to be able to set the captions as on or off, with ease. It is worth
looking at how the different players allow this:
Real: Uses SMIL for captions. There is a persistent setting that allows the
user to request captions all the time. Once turned on, captions display. I
think that it is important to provide instructions for changing this
setting, but if the developer is using closed captions in Real, the choice
about captions being on or off by default is up to the user.
QuickTime: Quicktime doesn't "understand" captions. All captions are is
another track, like audio or video. If the user has quicktime pro, they can
turn captions on and off by using the appropriate menu item and toggling the
caption track. If the user doesn't have QTpro, they can't do this. In this
case, providing captions on by default is one option that would ensure the
availability of captions. Another option is to use LiveStage to create a
'widget' that can be included in the movie and which provides direct control
over the display of a track names "captions" -- I have such an item
available at http://ncam.wgbh.org/richmedia/addcontrols.html. This 'widget'
will allow non-QTpro users to turn captions on or off.
Windows Media: Uses SAMI for captions. When the SAMI file (containing the
captions) is in the same directory as the video, the captions are available,
but it is up to the user to choose to view them. If I view captions for one
video, the captions area is going to be available for the next one, unless I
(or another user) changes that setting.

Hope this helps,
Andrew

On 8/27/01 4:24 PM, Holly Marie ( = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ) wrote:
>> In actual practice, however, I find that open captioning can
>> be quite distracting when you _don't_ need it.
>
> there are many other distractions that are much worse or more
> offending...than captioning might be(pop up ads, blinking marketing
> banners, ads that look like computer GUI boxes with click here etc). so
> if someone does not want open captioning they can set their applicaiton
> to default off, unless they change it.
>
> or the tool people making these media players, could have an easy toggle
> off and on feature on the control panel with that widely known closed
> captioning icon? that may be a good solution for all?
> so the set up of on or off is right there and handier.
>
>> I think it depends on your audience and how many you think will want
>> captioning. But unless you think that a majority of your audience
> needs
>> the captioning, I would opt for closed captioning rather than open.
>
> Well, that certainly is a good argument from your standpoint, and find
> myself agreeing with that.
>
> And wonder how we can apply this to marketing tactics, pop up windows
> and ads out there?
> Would be very nice to be able to squelch those items and interferences.
> It is getting so that we cannot fully close a browser without those
> hidden pop under ads popping back in our way.
>
> holly
>
>
>
--
Andrew Kirkpatrick, Technical Project Coordinator
CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media
125 Western Ave.
Boston, MA 02134
E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Web site: ncam.wgbh.org
617-300-4420 (direct voice/FAX)
617-300-3400 (main NCAM)
617-300-2489 (TTY)
WGBH enriches people's lives through programs and services that educate,
inspire, and entertain, fostering citizenship and culture, the joy of
learning, and the power of diverse perspectives.