Online Captioning: The Right Thing to Do

ONLINE CAPTIONING: THE RIGHT THING TO DO
[SOURCE: TVWeek, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] In 1971, Julia Child's great cooking show "The French Chef" became the first TV program accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people through closed captioning. Today, more than 35 years later, closed captioning isn't available to those who need it to enjoy new shows such as "Ugly Betty" or "Jericho" by streaming them on the Web or downloading them from iTunes. So even as the television industry embraces the digital age, it's leaving behind some disabled Americans, as well as those who use closed captioning to learn to speak English. That means that more than 23 million viewers in the U.S. are being excluded from the future of television in which viewers can watch whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want. We urge the industry to do what's right and devote whatever resources are necessary to provide closed captioning for all the material they are distributing over developing digital media. Given the low pricetag and the ease with which any technological barriers can be crossed, it's difficult to see why the networks haven't done more to treat hard-of-hearing Americans equally in the digital world. Now that the issue has been illuminated, it's time for them to act.
http://tvweek.com/news/2007/06/online_captioning_the_right_th.php
(requires free registration)