Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Caption Action 2 tries to gather support for Internet closed captioning, Marlee Matlin in DC Nov. 4-6 for the cause

Caption Action 2: Internet Closed Captioning has a Facebook page to gather support for its efforts to get Congress to pass HR 3101, and increase closed or open captioning on the Internet.

In addition, the National Association of the Deaf will have regular tweets about the topic @NADTweets, and deaf actress Marlee Matlin is going to be in D.C. Nov. 4-6 to push for Internet captioning. The Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COAT) is also lobbying for online captioning.

Here's what Caption Action 2 says about its cause:


In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a movement called Caption Action to get closed captions on home video. That movement was successful. Now we have the Internet, and television is moving to the Internet. But, many networks and channels do not caption on the Internet. This is Caption Action 2: Internet Captioning.

The beneficiary of Caption Action 2 is the American Association of People with Disabilities. When you make a donation to AAPD, AAPD will receive a statement indicating the contribution came from Caption Action 2. That way, AAPD will know that the donation is to support efforts to get the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009 passed.

We have a companion blog for Caption Action 2, at http://captionaction2.blogspot.com/.

Also, we have also become aware that some deaf and hearing people think mistakenly that the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009 will require everyone to caption on YouTube. That is not true. Only commercial and government broadcasters will likely be required to caption on YouTube. Grandma won't have to caption her video of her grandbaby learning how to walk.