Hi! I wanted to give a shout out to the several Kossacks who have recently gone to the effort of providing transcripts or links to video with captions and subtitles on the Internet. So if you've been doing this...
THANK YOU.
By doing so, you open the door for Deaf Democrats to take their place in the political discourse of America. Unfortunately, not every site is as "open" as DailyKos. More on that below the fold...
I've blogged on this a few times, but it's time to do it again. In the digital age, we've come to depend heavily on video for communication, education and propoganda. Sadly, the Bush Administration, as in so many other areas, has failed to keep the (ironically) Republican promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act and various other acts related to the accessibility of media. As of this moment, there is no major news site which regularly and dependably closed captions or subtitles news media. Worse, often there is no closed captioned or subtitle local media for emergencies - as we saw most drastically in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina, where hundreds of local families with Deaf or hard of hearing people struggled to obtain information - and thousands if not millions of friends struggled to find ways to help.
This isn't limited to the news, although I think that's the most important concern right now. It's also a problem in terms of entertainment. Apple finally added closed captioning for SOME of its iTunes movie downloads (I believe they're still working on television.) HEROES is the only TV program available online with some sort of weird captioning that's about six minutes behind what's happening on the screen, resulting in some weird constructions (Did you know the Petrelli brothers are toeless cheerleaders? I didn't.)
If this issue concerns you, and you want to make sure all Americans have the right and ability to be American (which to me means the right to be fully informed) please contact your favorite online news source and ask them to add captioning to their videos. (CNN, the New York Times and Democracy Now are three places I'd love to see captioning regularly available on even a tiny fraction of videos!) Also, if you have a video of your own, could you try captioning it or adding subtitles? It's really easy in iMovie! Finally, if there's a video online which you'd like to caption, you could try Project ReadOn, a perpetually overwhelmed but heroic effort to caption online offerings (they've done lots of political offerings this year!)
Also, keep in mind, the more captions are available online, the more my students (both hearing and Deaf) can learn. Thank you for your time.