Captioning Sucks!

http://captioningsucks.com/images/favicon.ico http://captioningsucks.com/images/cs-200x100.png 2008-05-27T14:35:00-05:00 Captioning Sucks! What’s new at the Open & Closed Project site that tells it like it is about captioning quality tag:captioningsucks.com,2008:T2008.05.27.100 Captioning Sucks 2008-05-27T14:35:00-05:00 2008-05-27T14:35:00-05:00 tag:sucks,2008:T2008.05.27p When 100% isn’t Beware corporate self-congratulation. A couple of weeks ago, the BBC issued a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/print/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/05_may/07/subtitling.shtml" title="BBC Vision celebrates 100% subtitling">press release</a>, dutifully retyped by <a href="http://www.grumpyoldeafies.com/2008/05/bbc_vision_celebrates_100_subt.html" title="Viz Grumpy Old Deafies">bloggers</a> and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/07/bbc.television/print" title="BBC hits ‘all shows subtitled’ target">hacks</a>, heralding the attainment of its goal of “100% subtitling.” They’re talking about captioning, not subtitling, and there is no way at all that any BBC channel really is captioning “100%” of its programming. True 100% captioning involves: <ul> <li>Every program on the network that has a soundtrack, including children’s and preschoolers’ shows, musicals (including orchestral performances and operas), and, crucially, subtitled programming. (Here’s another consequence of the inaccurate British terminology: It becomes impossible to “subtitle” a subtitled program.)</li> <li>Every live program. (Once that program is repeated, it isn’t live anymore and you can’t use real-time captioning for it.)</li> <li>Every foreign-language program that isn’t subtitled, like a language-learning show.</li> <li>Every program dubbed into the main language (for BBC television networks in the U.K., that means English; for S4C in Wales, it means Welsh).</li> <li>Every unexpected or urgent program that interrupts scheduled programming.</li> <li>Every commercial.</li> <li>Every promo, bumper, intro, extro, and public-service announcement.</li> <li>Signon and signoff broadcasts (if any – a stirring rendition of “God Save the Queen” at the close of the broadcast day still needs captioning).</li> </ul> A case could be made that a silent movie doesn’t need captioning, except to indicate that the movie is silent. A program presented entirely in sign language, if and only if it does not have a soundtrack, would also not need to be captioned. Now: Do any networks – including BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, CBeebies, CBBC and BBC News, and CBC Television and Newsworld in Canada – legitimately caption 100% of their programming? Of course not! In practical terms, 100% captioning is unattainable even if your station or network really does intend to caption everything on the list above. At some point, your systems are going to crash and you will lose captions – probably for a brief moment, but perhaps for up to a day. Five-nines reliability, that is, 99.999% captioning, is the best that can be expected. It gives you about five minutes’ downtime per year. If that seems unreasonable, note that HBO claims to comply with that standard (though they count only “programming,” not all the other items on our list). A claim of 100% captioning is essentially a form of product labelling. It is akin to a claim that a box of cereal provides 100% of the recommended daily allowance of fibre. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t; what we need are independently developed, ironclad definitions of what each of those terms means. In other words, you need the Open & Closed Project to work on a definition of what “100% captioning” really means. Because we definitely aren’t there yet. Captioning Sucks 2008-05-09T09:16:00-05:00 2008-05-09T09:16:00-05:00 tag:sucks,2008:T2008.05.09 Oh, it is so on! For-profit captioner Vitac launched a new site yesterday, <a href="http://captionson.com" title="Captions On">Caption Son</a>, to develop awareness about “quality captioning” – an undefined concept, but presumably any captioning not done by Vitac doesn’t make the cut. We didn’t know we’d spawn an imitator so quickly, nor could we have predicted such a poor imitation. At least our site is intentionally ugly. We also find it ironic that a site concerning accessibility should be quite so inaccessible to people with disabilities. Just as an example, what does Caption Son look like with no images loaded – in text-only mode, that is? <blockquote> <pre> " [1][LINK] [INLINE] [INLINE] [INLINE] [2][LINK] [INLINE] [3][LINK] [INLINE] [4][LINK] [INLINE] [5][LINK] [INLINE] [6][LINK] [INLINE] [EMBED] [INLINE] [INLINE] [INLINE] [INLINE] [INLINE] o National effort to build awareness of captions launched. [7]More o VITAC offers pro-bono captioning to nonprofit organizations. [8]More o Take the CaptionsON Challenge. [9]More </pre> </blockquote> The site does at least contain new information. Who can benefit from captioning? Not just deaf and hard-of-hearing people, it turns out, but people who became deaf fighting in Iraq. <div id="eye-rack"> <img src="http://captioningsucks.com/images/captionson-iraq.jpg" alt="Still from captioned video reads RETURNING FROM WAR Hearing damage is the #1 disability in the war on terror"> </div> CORRECTION: We realize now we misread the domain name of the new site. It is in fact Captions On, not Caption Son. We apologize for the confusion. Captioning Sucks 2008-04-25T15:14:00-05:00 2008-04-28T13:16:00-05:00 tag:sucks,2008:T2008.04.25a Transcript of Captioning SUCKS appearance on TV, Eh? podcast Captioning SUCKS founder Joe Clark appeared on the <a href="http://www.tv-eh.com/2008/04/24/this-sunday-on-tv-eh-blogtalkradio/" title="Show entry">TV, Eh? podcast</a> with Diane Wild on 2008.04.27. You can <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?i=25306821&id=260477664" title="(MP3) Podcast from 2008.04.27">download the MP3 of the podcast from iTunes</a>, or you can <a href="http://captioningsucks.com/about/docs/tv-eh/" title="Transcript of interview on the TV, Eh? podcast">read our transcript</a>. Captioning Sucks 2008-04-07T15:14:00-05:00 2008-04-07T15:14:00-05:00 tag:sucks,2008:T2008.04.07a The bare minimum you need to launch a Web site these days Good code, print stylesheets, RSS, graphics, and a presence on all the cool sites, however those are defined. Captioning Sucks 2008-04-01T09:15:00-05:00 2008-04-01T09:15:00-05:00 tag:sucks,2008:T2008.04.04 People who think “sucks” sucks suck Three days after launch, CAPTIONING SUCKS! has been received with some acclaim (see the numerous <a href="http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=%22Captioning+Sucks%22&scoring=d" title="Search on Google">blog mentions</a>). Quite a few writers commented on our graphic design, probably because we brought it up first. Our designer, Noel Jackson of <a href="http://eight6.com/" title="Eight6">Eight6</a>, seems to have achieved something that might have been an oxymoron before – intentional garishness. Now, then. There is the small matter of the <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Captioning/" title="Captioning@YahooGroups.com">Captioning mailing list</a>, where numerous subscribers pretend to be offended by our use of the word <cite>sucks</cite>. We don’t think they’re really offended; they’re making it up. We’re also quite sure they don’t have a clue how the net works. The use of the word <cite>sucks</cite> as part of a domain name is widespread – it is a standard of sorts – and <a href="http://www.wired.com/print/politics/law/news/2000/08/38056" title="Legal tips for your ‘sucks’ site">has been supported by court rulings in the U.S.</a> (Be that as it may, we aren’t in the U.S. and we aren’t even mentioning a trademark.) If you’re starting up a protest Web site, it pretty much has to use the pattern <code><var>TopicBeingProtested</var>SUCKS.com</code>. A Web site entitled <code>Prithee-Sir-Improve-Thine-Captioning.com</code> would go nowhere. So would a site named <code>Excuse-Me-Could-I-Make-a-Suggestion-About-Your-Captioning.com</code>. <cite>Sucks</cite> has no sexual connotations whatsoever in common usage. (Is a T-shirt that says MEAN PEOPLE SUCK also offensive in some way? What exact thing do these mean people suck?) No matter what a few uptight Republicans with skeletons in their own closets might want us to believe, everybody uses the term. It’s informal, but it isn’t vulgar or obscene. The kind of person who would be offended by the phrase “captioning sucks” simply isn’t our audience. If we aren’t being clear enough here, let us try harder: We don’t care if you’re offended by the word “sucks.” But can we take a step back for a moment? Captioning does suck. The complainers have not been able to prove it doesn’t. Every effort put forth thus far to fix captioning has failed. People who object to the word “sucks” might have other ideas about how to get captioning not to suck, but those ideas have gotten us nowhere. Everything that’s been tried before hasn’t worked. As far as we’re concerned, there’s nowhere to go but up. We thought that a concise, clever new site, bracingly titled, amusingly designed, and backed up by hard facts, would be a good place to start. By most accounts, we were right. We’re pushing for 100% captioning that is carried out according to independently-developed and tested standards. What are you pushing for? Captioning Sucks 2008-04-01T09:15:00-05:00 2008-04-01T09:15:00-05:00 tag:sucks,2008:T2008.04.01 Captioning Sucks! launches We launch. This site, while small, has been in the making for several months, and represents a great deal of effort on the part of the Open & Closed Project and the site’s designer, Noel Jackson of <a href="http://Eight6.com" title="Eight6">Eight6</a>. We also have a presence on <a href="http://twitter.com/captioningsucks" title="Captioning Sucks on Twitter">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://projects.metafilter.com/1415/" title="MeFi Projects announcement">on MetaFilter</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10875933580" title="Captioning SUCKS! group on the Facebook">on the Facebook</a>, <a href="http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/467053/" title="Listing on Upcoming">on Upcoming</a>, and <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeclark/sets/72157604339922473/" title="Photo set on Flickr">on Flickr</a> (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeclark/sets/72057594097988635/" title="CCfoto on Flickr">other captioning photos</a>). There’s an <a href="/feeds/" title="RSS newsfeed">RSS newsfeed</a> you can subscribe to for updates, or you can just check back here from time to time.