TV captions

Holly

Holly

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I am a hearing person, so please excuse me if this sounds ignorant or stupid. I am truly just curious. I have only been learning ASL for 9 months or so, I am nowhere near fluent! But my question is, do most deaf or hoh people watch television? If so, how useful do you find the captions? I know for me, at my gym most of the televisions volumes are turned down and captions added. I don't mind it so much except that sometimes they skip parts and can get so far behind. Do any of you guys find them effective? Do you watch much television?

Again, I don't mean to offend anyone in any way, I hope I haven't:)
 
Holly said:
I am a hearing person, so please excuse me if this sounds ignorant or stupid. I am truly just curious. I have only been learning ASL for 9 months or so, I am nowhere near fluent! But my question is, do most deaf or hoh people watch television? If so, how useful do you find the captions? I know for me, at my gym most of the televisions volumes are turned down and captions added. I don't mind it so much except that sometimes they skip parts and can get so far behind. Do any of you guys find them effective? Do you watch much television?

Again, I don't mean to offend anyone in any way, I hope I haven't:)
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Real-time captioning is often delayed.
 
but we watch a lot of tv... well, at least I do :) I've many shows I watch, but yes at times I would get frustrated if the cc stopped in the middle of the show and does not come back on! If it is messed up, repeating the lines over and over again. Crazy!
 
sleepytaz said:
but we watch a lot of tv... well, at least I do :) I've many shows I watch, but yes at times I would get frustrated if the cc stopped in the middle of the show and does not come back on! If it is messed up, repeating the lines over and over again. Crazy!
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That happens to mine all the time, depends of the static is interrupted, and it freezes the captions. So frustrating! It makes me wait for the captions to resume.


And one more thing, didn't you guys know that I believe that in the USA - these captions in the US are black and white colored? Well, not in Australia. They are coloured, to avoid confusion on where two people talk in one screen -- Do you know what I mean?

Australian captions below:
4c.jpg


USA / UK
usa-cc-mathers.jpg
 
I depend on them. It's a must when I am watching TV. Even with sports. I like to understand what's going on, word for word. It's way too quiet to watch shows without CC.

Only one that I have a lot problems with is one on HDTV or good picture. I can't watch shows on HDTV because they don't have CC. Instead, I have to bring the picture quality down so that I can watch it with CC. I feel bad when sister or other people are watching the show, they can't watch it with the best picture.

I haven't figure out how to watch HDTV (good picture) with CC.
 
Didn't you even try the Set top Digital box in by any chance?
 
I watch television alot, but I can't see the TV, so I usually download in advance the program's transcript and "skim along" on my braille display, while also only getting sound from the TV to my HA. If it's a brand-new show where I can't do that, or we're in the theaters, I have someone interpret for me.
 
Due to the annoying delays and gaps in captions Banjo mentioned and the horrible misspellings Byrdie brought up, I watch very little live commercial television. Too frustrating for a careful reader.

I get most of my news from carefully selected on-line news services.

Entertainment is mostly American Movie Channel (which thanks to ADer's e-mail is now all captioned) and DVDs.

Off topic: I wish U.S. captions were color-coded by speaker like Jake's Aussie examples. Terrific innovation.
 
Chase said:
Due to the annoying delays and gaps in captions Banjo mentioned and the horrible misspellings Byrdie brought up, I watch very little live commercial television. Too frustrating for a careful reader.

I get most of my news from carefully selected on-line news services.

Entertainment is mostly American Movie Channel (which thanks to ADer's e-mail is now all captioned) and DVDs.

Off topic: I wish U.S. captions were color-coded by speaker like Jake's Aussie examples. Terrific innovation.
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Then show our example to the U.S government or caption company to make it equal, in the color -coded captions, they are very useful to know what's happening, rather than knowing it is black and white.
 
CC decoders built in TVs in both Canada and USA are capable of showing coloured captions. However, it is not really used much. I don't know why.
 
Chase said:
Due to the annoying delays and gaps in captions Banjo mentioned and the horrible misspellings Byrdie brought up, I watch very little live commercial television. Too frustrating for a careful reader.

I get most of my news from carefully selected on-line news services.

Entertainment is mostly American Movie Channel (which thanks to ADer's e-mail is now all captioned) and DVDs.

Off topic: I wish U.S. captions were color-coded by speaker like Jake's Aussie examples. Terrific innovation.
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Yeah, I know what you mean.

There are some shows that are color-coded depending on the company. It also depends on the television as well. If a company decided to use color-coding for their show, but your television is set up for one color (i.e. black & white only)... then you will only see black & white. However, if your television was set up for color captioning... then it would work.

I have a friend who had color captioning. It was cool.
 
Jclarke said:
Didn't you even try the Set top Digital box in by any chance?
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No idea what you are talking about. There's too many buttons and menu for me to even set it up, lol.

I tried like CC1, it doesn't work then Digtial CC something and it doesn't work. So bye-bye good picture and back to lousy picture and bingo, CC is back.

It doesn't matter, I am used to standard picture.
 
Silentwolfdog said:
No idea what you are talking about. There's too many buttons and menu for me to even set it up, lol.

I tried like CC1, it doesn't work then Digtial CC something and it doesn't work. So bye-bye good picture and back to lousy picture and bingo, CC is back.

It doesn't matter, I am used to standard picture.
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This is a digital set top box where it will take care of the HDTV CC's

STB500A-digital-set-top-box.jpg
 
It's more common in Australia, I'm not even sure if you can buy one of these here. The reason why it may be popular with the deaf in Australia is due to the fact that built-in CC decoders are not mandated. Here in Canada and the USA, it is mandated for TV displays above 13" to be CC-ready.
 
Having closed-captions or subtitles have always been very very useful to me, and it also can be helpful to children to learn to read, and help other people that are forgien live here in america can learn some English langauge too. Closed captioning is an integral and crucial part of a deaf and hard of hearing person's daily life and personal safety.
 
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