Although thirty years of the excitement and drama of television have come into American homes, for those who cannot hear it TV is little more than a silent movie. As of 1985 there were 21.2 million deaf and hearing impaired people living in the United States, according to a research survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, a staggering 9% of our overall population. Today, closed captioning allows those Americans to better understand and enjoy the content provided on their televisions, opening up a whole new world of news, movies and prime time entertainment.
There is a non profit organization set up in 1979 by the government that supplies 90% of the subtitles for TV shows. This same organization has created subtitles for countless films which are available for viewing at home. In a survey conducted over eighteen hours and across six television stations, around 13% of all programming provided closed captioning. Children’s shows comprise about one third of these closed captions.
This government organization works with network execs, programmers and TV producers to provide closed captioning for their programming. Some of these people are surprisingly resistant to this idea. For many networks the deaf market is something they have never really considered. It appears until contacted by the organization, catering for the hearing impaired had not been amongst their priorities.
Currently, people are sometimes resistant to providing these closed captions because the number of individuals who need this service is around one million people. This number is determined from the fact that only around 150,000 homes have the decoder that allows them to view closed captions. This number is likely to increase by 30,000 by the end of the year however.
We refer to this as the chicken or the egg dilemma, as in which comes first, since it’s the number of captioned programs that influences the viewer numbers, which in turn affect how many programs are captioned. An hour long program will only cost around $2,000 to closed caption. The cost will fluctuate depending upon what show it is, how much dialog there is and how difficult the script is.
It must be determined when a caption should appear, and the length of time viewers need to read the caption, when prerecorded shows are being captioned. Closed captioning is a quicker process when we are working with action movies. For instance, subtitling Raiders of the Lost Ark, will be much less involved than providing subtitles for A Man for All Seasons.
While some of these programs receive their funding entirely from the Department of Education, some corporations, and the public broadcasting service, many others are being subsidized by various foundations or NCI. Often it’s set up where we’re willing to pay a third of the cost if you and the network each pay a third. Part of the problem in achieving the needed audience size is public awareness, as well as part of it being the decoder. The device cost around $280 when it first arrived in 1980. Today it’s often less than $250 and usually averages $200.
Grants from foundations or corporations can help provide decoders for low income deaf or hearing impaired Americans who might not otherwise be able to pay. Some of our country’s largest cities are participating in our programs, that allow a charge of only $35 for the decoder. As technology evolves, we are hopeful that the cost of the decoder will continue to decline, someday reaching a cost that allows TV manufacturers to see the benefit in adding a decoder capability into one or more of their TV models.
Many Americans suffer through compromised hearing without this disability even being apparent to others. Today the largest group of physically disabled people in this country is the hearing impaired, but due to their invisibility in society these people often discover they have become isolated within their own lifestyle. The biggest bonus to closed captioning is it allows a family to enjoy a show together, the hearing impaired enjoying the show or movie just as much as family members who can hear perfectly.
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