A history of closed captioning and a comparison of online caption editors. For my presentation at Refresh DC on June 16, 2011.

1. Video
Captioning on
the Web

2. Russell Heimlich
★ Sole developer at the Pew Research Center
★ Creator of dummyimage.com
★ Frontend and Backend Developer
★ I care about accessibility

3. What Are Video Captions?
“Captions are text versions of the spoken
word allowing the content of web audio
and video to be accessible to those who
do not have access to audio.”
– WebAim.org

4. What Are Video Captions?
★ You know them as the text on the bottom

5. Captions vs. Subtitles
★ Captions are a transcript of the audio and key
sound effects for deaf viewers.
★ Subtitles are translations of the audio in another
language for hearing viewers.
★ http://joeclark.org/appearances/AEA/2007/

6. Open Captions vs. Closed Captions
★ Open captions are burned in to the video and
always on the screen.
★ Closed captions can be turned on or off and are
independent of the video.

7. Open Captions vs. Closed Captions
★ Open captions are like a flattened image
★ Closed captions are like Photoshop layers

8. Who Benefits from Captions?
★ Deaf viewers
★ Hard of hearing
★ Second language
learners
★ Anyone watching TV
in a noisy
environment
★ Machines (online)

9. The History of Captions
How we got to where we are today...

10. PBS’ French Chef (1972)
★ First television program that was accessible to
deaf and hard of hearing viewers.
★ Used “Open” Captions (burned onto the video)
★ Source: http://www.ncicap.org/caphist.asp

11. Closed Captioning
★ First demonstrated in 1971 at a Hearing
Impaired conference in Nashville.
★ 2nd Demo at Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet
University) on February 15, 1972.
★ PBS station WETA broadcasted the first closed
captioned programming in 1973.

12. The Early Years of Closed Captioning
★ Real-time closed captioning wasn’t available
until 1982.
★ A separate set-top box was needed to decode

13. Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990
★ Gave FCC power to enact rules on the
implementation of Closed Captioning.
★ Required screens 13” or greater to have built-in
chip to display closed captions.
★ Enforced on July 1st, 1993

14. 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act
★ Ensures equal opportunity for persons with
disabilities
★ Public facilities (excluding movie theaters) had
to provide access to verbal information on
televisions, films or slide shows

15. Telecommunications Act of 1996
Requires people or companies that distribute
television programs directly to home viewers to
make sure those programs are captioned by
January 1, 1998.
Source: National Institute on Deafness and Other
Communication Disorders

16. 21st Century Communications and Video
Accessibility Act of 2010
★ Requires broadcasters to provide captioning for
television programs redistributed on the web.
★ Source: Bill H.R. 3101

17. How Do I
Caption My
Online Videos?

18. By Online I Really Mean YouTube
★ YouTube receives 48 hours of video a minute
★ 3 Billion views a day!
★ According to ComScore, as of April 2011,
YouTube is the top online video property.
★ Source: YouTube Blog & ComScore

19. In other words...

20. Paid Captioning Services
For those with more money than time

21. CPCweb.com
★ $95 for 30 seconds
★ 2 hours for $1,420

22. Vitac.com
★ $7.50 / video minute
★ $75 minimum

23. VideoTranscription.net
★ $3 / video minute
★ Done by humans

24. SpeakerText.com
★ $2 / video minute
★ Machine / Human Analysis

25. Do It Yourself Tools
For those with more time than money

26. Overstream.net

27. yt-subs.appspot.com

28. Subtitle-Horse.com

29. CaptionTube.appspot.com

30. WikiCaptions.org

31. UniversalSubtitles.org

32. What about YouTube itself?

33. Adding Captions Screen

34. Upload Your Own
★ Supports SubViewer (.sub) and SubRip (.srt)
★ YouTube has it’s own similar format called SBV
★ Any of these can be created in a text editor
★ YouTube will convert it to SBV for you!

35. SubViewer (.sub) Format
{Start frame}{End frame}Text ( | = line break )
{1471}{1538}..and the continuance|of their parents' rage,...
{1540}{1634}..which, but their children's end,|nought could
remove,...
{1636}{1702}..is now the two hours' traffic|of our stage.

36. SubRip (.srt) Format
Subtitle Number
Start time --> End time (HH:MM:SS,milliseconds)
Text (one or more lines)
Blank line
1
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:24,400
Altocumulus clouds occur between six thousand
2
00:00:24,600 --> 00:00:27,800
and twenty thousand feet above ground level.

37. YouTube’s SBV Format
Start time, End time (H:MM:SS.milliseconds)
Text (one or more lines)
0:00:03.490,0:00:07.430
>> FISHER: All right. So, let's begin.
This session is: Going Social
0:00:07.430,0:00:11.600
with the YouTube APIs. I am
Jeff Fisher,
0:00:14.009,0:00:15.889
[pause]

38. Upload A Transcript
★ No timecode? No problem.
★ Upload a transcription and YouTube will sync it
to the video automatically
★ English and Japanese Only

39. Automatic Transcriptions
★ Uses speech recognition to auto-caption video
★ Same quality as Google Voice Transcriptions
★ Manually Started (could take a few days)
★ Source: googlesystem.blogspot.com

40. YouTube Captions Fail

41. Auto-translate Captions From the Player
★ Machine translation available on the fly.

42. YouTube Caption Limitations
★ You can only add captions to your own videos!
★ Poor audio quality = poor caption quality
★ Caption data only available via API to
logged-in users

43. Other YouTube Caption Tricks
★ Add ,cc to any search to show only captioned
videos
★ In the player, press...
+ to increase font
- to decrese
B or b to toggle caption background
★ Captions are repositionable (YouTube.com only)

44. To sum things up...

45. ★ Video captions are important
★ Plenty of services to do caption videos for you
★ Not a lot of good tools available
★ Tedious to create captions from scratch today
★ YouTube is easier/cheap way to caption videos

46. One More
Thing...

47. Demo of VidCapper.com

48. The End. Questions?
★ Follow @kingkool68
★ Follow @VidCapper and VidCapper.com
★ Accessibility DC Meetup June 21, MLK Library
★ Accessibility Camp DC, October 22