submitted by Catharine

Either I’m hearing more about new accessibility initiatives with captioning / as well as goof-ups, or I’m paying more attention to the news. I thought I’d share a few with you!

1. The FCC is listening. A lot of content online is not captioned, eventhough the number of U.S. broadband households watching premium online content via online has doubled to 25 million in the last year according to Broadband, Communications, and Entertainment Bundles, a new study from Parks Associates. That’s a lot of online content! There was a recent FCC Field Hearing by members of the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technologies (COAT) testified on a panel at Gallaudet University to call for better captioning online and on TV. (Captioning has not transferred well with the transition to HDTV)

2. Google: What’s up? can you give us a hint? In the latest issue of the DC Magazine, the featured article profiles Vint Cerf, the Google Chief Evangelist. (Page 58-59, specifically) This article highlights his awesome work in:

1. Starting the Internet (thank you. I don’t know what we’d do without the Internet.) and;
2. Developing sweet Web interfaces that would help people who are deaf or blind. His lips are sealed until the public debut in November. I’m sitting at the edge of my seat, wondering what this could possibly be?! He quotes, “Google represents the idea that all things should be egalitarian,” …”And accessibility to everyone should be the underlying principle.”     Bingo.

Oh, and also, not to promote ourselves too much or anything, but if you keep flipping through the magazine to page 140, you’ll see an article about Keen.

3. Mobile TV available with captions: To my great surprise, in a new initiative for media using mobile DTV (Yes, you read it right: watching TV on your phone), captioning is being included. WOW. This is huge – and rare. Captions is almost always an afterthought. Not for mobile TV and you bet, I’m going to do everything I can to support those initiatives. (If you want to get technical, the DTV standard supports CEA708 (HD CC)). You can thank the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) for their efforts! www.atsc.org

4. DIY Accessibility: The National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) created guidelines for content providers who would like to create accessible iTunes media via captions, subtitles, and audio descriptions. This is great because it helps content providers realize that taking steps to ensure accessibility can be relatively simple. It’s really not that complicated to ensure that as many people can access your content. A content provider? Read here to learn how to do this.

5. Uh-oh. Kind of embarrassing: Disney releases the movie “Up” without captions. Big whoops. Marlee Matlin tweets, “I and 36 million deaf and hard of hearing people are not special features.” Read article in the Consumerist. I’m just hoping that it was a bit of an unintentional oversight!

Last but not least! Watch this space. If I can, I’ll post some pretty awesome insights about emerging technology on Thursday. Stay tuned.