Thanks to actress Marlee Matlin for her tweet that tipped me to this story. From The Consumerist:Imagine you're deaf or hard of hearing, and put off watching Pixar's "Up" until the DVD release. You rent the DVD from Netflix, Redbox, or Blockbuster, and the box or Web listing promises captions. But when you settle in to watch the movie, you discover that there are no captions to be found. Not in any language.
One reader posted his story on Livejournal:
"So I rented the movie Up off of Netflix. Came in the day it was released in stores. Stick the disc into my player...
No closed captions.
Flick through the subtitle menu on the DVD player...
No subtitles either.
Apparently, as I'm gathering from some Twitter searches, Disney (who handles the distribution of Pixar's movies) released a special bare-bones version of the DVD to major rental businesses- Netflix, Redbox, and Blockbuster are all confirmed- that not only lacks the bonus shorts from the retail DVD, but even lacks the closed-captioning. Which is, y'know, half the reason I rented the DVD in the first place rather than going to see it at the dollar theater.
FAIL, Disney. EPIC FAIL.
I'm going to be checking to see if my local indie rental store has a retail copy of the DVD; I've got confirmation that that version, at least, is captioned.
Seriously, Disney? What were you thinking?!"
Apparently, a special rental market version of the DVD was produced, which lacks pretty much all of the special features.
Netflix, at least, doesn't promise English-language captions on their page for "Up." It lists the DVD's features as:
"Other features:
Color; interactive menus; scene access.
Subtitles:
French, Spanish"
However, readers claim that the rental version of the DVD lacks both the interactive menus and the foreign language subtitles.
We haven't confirmed this, but one Twitter user claims that a Disney customer service representative told him that the rental version lacks DVD bonus features for marketing reasons.
"I called the Disney support phone # from their website (yay for WebCaptel!) When I told her why I was calling she said 'Yes, we know.' She went on to say that it was a marketing decision to remove all special features, apparently they saw SDH [subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing] as a special feature."
In other words, if you want the DVD extras, fancy menus, and captions, you'll have to buy the retail version of "Up." This makes sense from a marketing perspective, but isn't fair to those customers who use and need captions.
Interestingly, I just found a 1997 article from Electronic Media that said the FCC was going to be vigilant about requiring most new TV shows to be captioned by 2006:
WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission unveiled rules last week (August 1997) that would require most new TV shows to be closed-captioned for the deaf and hearing-impaired within eight years.
Under the rules, 95 percent of new shows-defined as those first exhibited on or after Jan. 1 next year-and 75 percent of the rest would have to be closed-captioned by Jan. 1, 2006.
But the FCC rules exempt new networks, defined as those under four years in age.
Also exempted are networks with annual revenue of less than $3 million, whether they're mom-and-pop operations or owned by a giant like Time Warner.
In addition, no network has to devote more than 2 percent of its annual revenue to captioning.
The regulations, mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, also provide an exemption for advertisements.
In addition, the FCC's order makes clear that electronic newsroom devices, which essentially convert TelePrompTer feeds into on-screen captions, are fine for news shows.
Also exempt are late-night shows (2 a.m. to 6 a.m.), public service announcements and "non-vocal musical programming."
In addition, the FCC said it would grant waivers in other cases where captioning would be "economically burdensome."
The rules are expected to be particularly challenging for cable because most broadcast network programming is already closed-captioned.
But according to The Caption Center, a nonprofit organization based in Boston, only 10 percent of basic cable network programming is now closed-captioned.
Though the FCC approved the rules unanimously, the commissioners were of different minds on the regulations.
Commissioner Rachelle Chong, for instance, said she believed the rules were "a little bit overregulatory." But Chairman Reed Hundt made clear that he believed the rules should have required that all TV shows be captioned eventually.
"It's compromise to a greater degree than I am happy with for the hearing-impaired community," Mr. Hundt said.
Karen Peltz Strauss, legal counsel for the National Association of the Deaf, said she also was "unpleasantly surprised" by the FCC's ruling.
"The law says new programming is supposed to be fully accessible," she said. "It has always been our understanding that means 100 percent, with exemptions where closed-captioning would be economically burdensome. We're not happy because we thought we were getting a lot more."
Joe Karlovits, president of VITAC Corp.-a Pittsburgh-based captioning company-said he believed the rules represented an equitable compromise.
Decker Anstrom, president of the National Cable Television Association, said, "Today's decision by the FCC is a reasonable, good faith effort to balance the needs of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community with the business realities faced by the cable industry."
