VLogs with(out) captions

[Taric25]

Are sick and tired of watching the VLogs (Video Blogs) in ASL without captions? I sure am.

You think that the Deaf community would be more attune to the needs of people with disabilities, but it seems that it's more of a double standard. Think about it. Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, Latened Deafened, Oral Deaf and DeafBlind people complain to Hearing people when videos (with audio) have no captions. A Deaf person creating a VLog without captions is no different!

Think about it, if you had a VLog, could a Blind or DeafBlind person view it? No, becuse your little video in ASL has no text captions for a screen reader or dynamic braille display.

What's worse, the VLogs that have captions all treat the captions as a joke! In one video I saw, the Deaf person signed about his day, but the captionist was typing complete nonsense such as "wind moving through the room... um, what language is this supposed to be?... there's no audio..." Is that supposed to be funny? That's insulting! In another video I saw, a Deaf person makes fun of Oralism.
David Oral and ASL - Google Video

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining because I want captions for ASL. I know ASL, but it doesn't help when you fingerspell a million miles an hour or use regional signs. I send signed e-mail to my friends all the time, with my webcam, but I add captions, to make it easier to understand. Think about it, if I fingerspell my videophone IP, is that going to be easy to read?

I remember my brother posted an Audio/Video log to his MySpace, and I sat in the Library and watched his jaws flap with no audio and no captions. (My brother does not sign.) I called him and told him I could add captions, if he e-mailed the files to me. I did. Not only did I make his videos accessible to people with disabilities, it was easier to understand, people without certian technology can view it, and subtitiles are added for foreign language (My mom did a cameo, and she spoke Arabic in part of the video. I captioned, "(Speaking Arabic) He-se i-te ta-le Ga-gu. (Now, you look like Gagu [Taric's baby name]).")

I'm not saying you have to have an interpreter give your video a voice over, but text captions, or at least a text transcript, makes your video accessible. Make your VLogs accessible to people with disabilities. Period.

 

[Your Mom]

I have to say that I totally agree with you, even for those of us who can understand ASL, it is often difficult on such a small screen and in pixels. As well sometimes people move their hands out of view of the camera so you miss things or finger spell something so fast that you have to rewind several times just to grasp what they are saying.

But, I consider my self to be computer literate but I am rather illiterate when it comes to the art of vlogging. So some of it might simply be laziness, and some if it might be that they just dont know how to add captions.

 

[Taric25]

MAGPie

True, it's kind of hard to add captions, when you don't know how. When I needed to do so, I found MAGPie quickly, via google search. It's a free program you can use, to add captions to your videos.

 

[Your Mom]

True, it's kind of hard to add captions, when you don't know how. When I needed to do so, I found MAGPie quickly, via google search. It's a free program you can use, to add captions to your videos.

Maybe if more people knew about that software then it would be less of a problem.

I also find it funny that we can get free programs to add captioning to video blogs, but when i sent an email to a local news company they said that they could not add closed captioning because the software it would take to do that would cost 7-10 thousand dollars. Im not asking for some fancy smancy captioning, just something as simple that is found on video blogs would have worked, but they refused saying that they would not only have to pay thousands of dollars for the software but would have to fill an entire new position to get someone to type the broadcasts and pay a lot in training.

 

[Taric25]

Cheap Captions

Maybe if more people knew about that software then it would be less of a problem..

Yeah, it took me forever to find that on Google: a whole 15 seconds. It's not that people don't know how, because they could find out. I just think people don't want to, because it's extra work, IMHO.

when i sent an email to a local news company they said that they could not add closed captioning because the software it would take to do that would cost 7-10 thousand dollars. Im not asking for some fancy smancy captioning, just something as simple that is found on video blogs would have worked, but they refused saying that they would not only have to pay thousands of dollars for the software but would have to fill an entire new position to get someone to type the broadcasts and pay a lot in training.

Wait, who is this, refusing to caption what? A news company refused to caption... what? The news? Live closed captions are really expensive, and really hard to produce, because you have to have a stenographer to type about 225 words per minute, and the equipment is expensive. It's rare you see a captionist using a stenomask, open captions, sign language interpreter (still expensive), or other means to make the program accessible. Live captions are expensive, but timed captions can be even more expensive, because it takes about eight to ten hours to caption a half our of content. In conclusion, closed captions for TV can be super expensive, because all the equipment is so proprietary.

Open captions or closed captions for video files are cheap. If the captions aren't an emergency, you can create open captions for any video, or closed captions for video files rather in expensively, or you can do it yourself.

One time, a Deaf friend of mine wanted a transcript of an ALog (Audio Blog) I posted, so he called me with IP-Relay, and I held the phone up to the computer. Wow, that was so expensive — not. He could have easily e-mailed me the conversation, and I would have posted it in my blog.

 

[Cousin Vinny]

Go to Google Video and use this as a search term;

triomphe loeil

You'll find my videos. Enjoy!

Interestingly enough, Google Video now searches through captions! Now, that's cool, and I hope will spur more captioned content, now that such content is indexed by Google's search engine.

Also, Google Video allows the end-viewer to turn on/off the captions, a feature I like, as sometimes I want to watch pure ASL.

 

[Taric25]

Enjoy!

You'll find my videos. Enjoy!

I do enjoy! Wow, I love your videos! Thanks!

 

[GalaxyAngel]

vlogs best suitable come w/captions..
So won't be troubling understanding...

 

[Interpretrator]

Also, Google Video allows the end-viewer to turn on/off the captions, a feature I like, as sometimes I want to watch pure ASL.

That's just what I was going to say. While I generally prefer ASL vlogs with no captioning, as the English can be a distraction, I do see Taric's point. I was going to say that the best situation for me would allow the viewer to turn the captions on or off (because sometimes I do miss something and the captions are helpful), so it's good to know Google allows that.

Where that option isn't available, I think they should be captioned; it's easier for signers to ignore captions than it is for non-signers to understand ASL, after all!

 

[Taric25]

Access

Where that option isn't available, I think they should be captioned; it's easier for signers to ignore captions than it is for non-signers to understand ASL, after all!

My main reason for captions is to make VLogs accessible to people with disabilities. For example, a Blind, DeafBlind, or Dyslexic person may find it difficult or impossible understand a VLog with open captions, or no captions at all. Open captions do not help, because the information is in the video, and a screen reader or dynamic braille display cannot read video, but UAs (User Agents), such as screen readers or dynamic braille displays, can read text. What situation could you think of, where closed captions are not possible? Closed captions are available for TV, WMP (Windows Media Player), QT (Quicktime), RM (Realmedia), DVD, and a variety of other formats.

 

[Hear Again]

Taric,

I couldn't agree with you more! I'm deafblind and use a screen reader (JAWS) and a Braille display to access the computer. During the Gallaudet protests, I received several links to various vlogs through the listservs I participate on, but was unable to access them because I couldn't see the screen (I'm totally blind). Needless to say, I was disappointed because I really wanted to learn more about the students' perspective regarding the protests. Sure, I could have found similar information on websites like ridor.com, but that's not the point. With vlogs and alogs becoming more popular, it's time they become useable by those of us with disabilities.

 

[Banjo]

Hear Again, I didn't know you were blind. Just in case you weren't aware, I do caption my vlog entries. You can find them at Banjo's World

I don't know if JAWS is capable of reading captions, but the captions aren't burnt onto the video. It's a text file formatted in SubRip. The extension for SubRip is srt. Hope you'll be able to read the captions from my vlog entries.

 

[Hear Again]

Banjo,

I've never tried reading captions with JAWS before, but if the captions are in text format, I don't think it should be a problem. I'll definitely check out your website and give it a try! Thanks!

 

[Taric25]

Collated Text

I don't know if JAWS is capable of reading captions, but the captions aren't burnt onto the video. It's a text file formatted in SubRip. The extension for SubRip is srt. Hope you'll be able to read the captions from my vlog entries.

If your concerned about UAs (User Agents), such as screen readers, or dynamic braille displays, being able to diplay closed captions, create a collated text transcript. Here's an example of a collated text transcript of a clip from "The Lion King" (available at [DVS]). Note that the Describer is providing the auditory description of the video track and that the description has been integrated into the transcript.

Simba: Yeah!

Describer: Simba races outside, followed by his parents. Sarabi smiles and nudges Simba gently toward his father. The two sit side-by-side, watching the golden sunrise.

Mufasa: Look Simba, everything the light touches is our kingdom.

Simba: Wow.

Collated text transcripts allow access by people with both visual and hearing disabilities. They also provide everyone with the ability to index and search for information contained in audio/visual materials. Collated text transcripts include spoken dialogue as well as any other significant sounds including on-screen and off-screen sounds, music, laughter, applause, etc. In other words, all of the text that appears in captions as well as all of the descriptions provided in the auditory description.

Creating collated text isn't much harder than creating closed captions. Imagine your Hearing friend is watching a video, and you're talking to your Hearing friend over the phone, with IP-Relay. Imagine that the relay operator can hear the audio, but your friend has to describe the video. Now imagine you save the conversation on your computer and then edit it for any mistakes. That's collated text.

You can write collated text into your HTML easily. Just include it between the EMBED tags.

<EMBED style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-6791975927169202422&hl=en-CA" flashvars="&amp;subtitle=on">
Description: A setting of parkbench against a brickwall pans right. The sign above reads, "Banjo's World Vlog No. 003". Now, in a dark room, Banjo appears, using American Sign Language.
Caption: Hello, I'm Banjo aka Paul.
</EMBED>

I know the video goes on, but I wasn't about to create a whole transcript for you. :P

 

[Etoile]

I always provide a transcript for my vlog, because I have a lot of friends who are interested in watching it but don't know ASL. I hadn't seen MAGpie before though, I'll have to give it a try.

 

[Taric25]

MAGPie is evil

I hadn't seen MAGpie before though, I'll have to give it a try.

I recommend against MAGPie, simply because the program is full of bugs, and a 13-year-old could write a better program. Instead, use Aegisub. You can export your captions to SRT and upload them to Google Video.

 

[Nesmuth]

At least 90% of the deaf society is illiterate so I'm not expecting deafies putting captions on their vlogs in the near future. And its exacerbated by the deaf community's hostility towards written English.

Richard

 

[Etoile]

I'll take "Deliberately Inflammatory" for $100, Alex?

 

[Interpretrator]

I'll take "Deliberately Inflammatory" for $100, Alex?

He's on a roll these days. Must be that time of the month.

 

[Hear Again]

At least 90% of the deaf society is illiterate so I'm not expecting deafies putting captions on their vlogs in the near future. And its exacerbated by the deaf community's hostility towards written English.

Richard

Richard,

You make comments like this and call yourself a Deaf Activist?!